Former Wellfleet resident Louis S. Epstein died peacefully on July 23, 2023 in Houlton, Maine. No cause was given. He was 81.
The son of David and Ethel Epstein, Lou was born on May 11, 1942 in Glens Falls, N.Y., where he grew up.
He came to the Cape after meeting his wife, Rose, in 1975. They settled in Eastham and married in 1978. Lou worked for two years on a fishing boat out of Wellfleet before he took a job as an oil burner repairman with Mooney’s Fuel and Grain. A few years later, he built his own house in Wellfleet.
In 2001, Lou retired from Cape Cod Oil, which had bought out Mooney’s in the 1990s. He was well liked in the community, and his friends missed him when he retired and moved away.
“He wanted to live as far off the grid as he could,” said Lou’s daughter, Jesio. “A lake house was his dream,” she added, which he realized in retirement when he found a house on the side of a mountain in the woods of Danforth, Maine, where he connected with a new community of friends.
“My father was an easygoing man,” Jesio said, “and very private.”
“If you live in the present,” she quoted him saying, “that is enough.”
Lou “was a good father,” Jesio said, “who taught us how to fish, how to hunt, how to garden, how to play cards — all the important stuff.”
He always had a cat. His latest, Oscar, was a loyal walking companion. Unleashed, Oscar would follow Louis on his two-mile walks.
Lou leaves his wife, Rose, of Danforth, with whom he spent the last 48 years of his life; their two children, daughter Jesio Epstein and son Harley D. Epstein, both of Wellfleet; his sister, Barbara Epstein of Healdsburg, Calif.; and his cat, Oscar.
A potluck to celebrate Lou’s life will be on Sunday, Sept. 10 from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. at the Truro Community Center. For further details, contact Jesio at [email protected].
