LTV Founder Frazer Dougherty Dies at 101

Frazer Dougherty, a World War II veteran and artist best known as the founder of the Hamptons-based public access cable television station LTV 40 years ago, died at his home in Florida on August 29. He was 101.

Born to Graham Dougherty and Maria Frazer in Wyncote, Pennsylvania on June 16, 1922, Frazer later moved with his parents and three older siblings to Virginia. He attended the Gilman School in Baltimore, Maryland then joined the U.S. Army Air Corps, where he flew more than 60 missions as a B-25 pilot assigned to the 345th Bomber Group, 498th Squadron.

Dougherty married in 1943 Page Caroline Huidekoper, with whom he had four children before the couple divorced. He then married Frances Ann Cannon Hersey in 1963. After she died in 2001, he married Eleanor Sage Leonard in 2006.

Dougherty operated an air taxi service known as Flotair for a time, sailed the Aegean Sea for most of the 1970s, then settled in East Hampton in the 1980s. That’s when he cofounded LTV with Jill Keefe and Bill King. He hosted the two-hour morning show Hello! Hello! East End for years.

“When I showed up at a Town Board meeting with my video camera to tape a few sessions, nobody liked my being there,” Dougherty told The New York Times in 1994. “That meeting was a particularly emotional one, with 350 people in attendance, because the-then Town Supervisor had just eliminated the Planning Department, and people were outraged. When she realized how strongly the community felt she apologized for her decision and said she’d reinstate it.”

LTV Hamptons has since grown into an institution, airing public meetings for local government entities across the South Fork as well as a variety of programming hosted by local community members.

In addition to being a driving force behind LTV, Dougherty was also a prolific silkscreen artist, who continued creating original works after he retired and moved to Florida.

Dougherty is predeceased by Leonard. He is survived by his four children Frazer P. Dougherty, Rush Dougherty, Ariel Dougherty, Page Delano, five stepchildren, 11 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.

The family asks that donations be made in his name to the Southern Poverty Law Center or the American Civil Liberties Union.