“He was an extraordinary man,” said Gloria Cole Sugarman, Tracy’s wife. "He was the nicest person I ever knew.”
She described her husband as brilliant and good at everything, specifically pointing to his writing and artistic abilities, and said he did everything with grace. She added that he loved Westport.
“Our town, our nation has lost one of its most distinguished artists,” First Selectman Gordon Joseloff said of Sugarman, an icon who had lived in Westport for the past 62 years.
Sugarman defied his age and remained active, Joseloff said. He even wrote his first book over the past two years, and it was published about two months ago. “He was not afraid of doing new things into his 90s,” he said.
“Tracy was a great Westporter, a great American and a great man,” Blogger and friend Dan Woog said. “I never heard anyone say a bad word about him.”
Sugarman was a man of action, serving his country at D-Day and going to Mississippi during the height of the civil rights movement, Woog said. Sugarman always worked to make the community a better place and never hesitated to step up, he said.
Woog said that he will always remember how Sugarman was respectful of other people's feelings, recalling a time when he spoke carefully to young children about his time in the armed forces.
Both Woog and Joseloff remembered Sugarman's moving speech as grand marshall was at the Memorial Day Parade in 2011.
A memorial service will be held this spring, the family said.
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