Cherry Grove’s Lois McIntosh, longtime life partner of Meryl Facterman, with whom she founded Cherry’s on the Bay and produced the first Doctor’s Fund Benefits there, passed away on September 30, having suffered “a massive stroke,” according to musician Celeste Belletti, who remembered Lois on Facebook.
Lois had been a gym teacher and coach; a “bartender in [New York City] lesbian bars in the 1950s,” according to Esther Newton, who wrote about Lois in her book “Cherry Grove, Fire Island;” and first bartended at the Sea Shack in the Grove in 1960. In 2006, a number of years after Lois and Meryl sold Cherry’s, they became managers of the Tides, on the site of the Monster, for several seasons.
Sincerest condolences go out to Meryl and to Johnny Pool, Charles “Charity” Delorfano, and their other close friends.