More than 450 guests packed a Wickapogue Road estate transformed into a 1940s supper club, and by night's end the Southampton Hospital Foundation had pulled in more than $1.8 million for Stony Brook Southampton Hospital and the Stony Brook East Hampton Emergency Department. The 68th Annual Summer Party featured Macklowe whiskey cocktails, château Sainte Marguerite rosé, and an auction that ended with two safari packages to Namibia's Ongava Game Reserve going to eager bidders. It's a lot of glamour for a cause rooted in a much less glamorous reality: the South Fork has exactly one hospital serving both its year-round residents and its summer flood of vacationers.
The gala, designed by DeJuan Stroud under the theme “An Evening at the Supper Club,” drew a who's who of East End philanthropy, according to amNewYork. Supporters named among the crowd included Alina de Almeida, John Paulson, Howard and Wendy Cox, Jay Lieberman, Jamee and Peter Gregory, Julie and Billy Macklowe, Candace Bushnell, and representatives of Bloomberg Philanthropies, along with Louise and Howard Phanstiel, Charlotte and Alejandro Santo Domingo, and Barbara and Randall Smith. Elegant Affairs handled the dinner service, while family-style desserts, Dolce & Gelato, and Dreesen's Doughnuts rounded out the menu. Christiaan Padavan performed during cocktail hour, and the Frank Simmons Band played late into the evening.
Lynn A. Scotti chaired the party, backed by a roster of vice chairs that included Liz Lange, Jackie Mitchell, Margo Nederlander, Melanie Wambold, Sarah Wetenhall, and Jean Shafiroff, with Fern Mallis serving as fashion chair and Nancy Stone as corporate partnership chair. Auctioneer Lydia Fenet ran the paddle-raise portion of the evening, at one point offering up a second Namibia safari package after bidding on the first grew heated. Foundation president Julia J. McCormack said the funds raised “would support innovative programs, advanced technology and compassionate care for generations to come,” per the same amNewYork account.
Why the South Fork Leans So Hard on One Hospital
Stony Brook Southampton Hospital is the sole provider of emergency care on Long Island's South Fork, offering trauma and stroke care, cancer treatment, cardiac services, surgery, and other specialties to a region that stretches from Westhampton to Montauk. The hospital operates 124 licensed beds and handles roughly 25,000 emergency department visits a year, according to SBU News. About half of those visits happen during the peak summer season, when ER volume effectively doubles in July and August compared with the rest of the year, as detailed by East End Beacon.
That seasonal surge is exactly the strain events like the Summer Party are built to offset. The hospital also houses the Audrey and Martin Gruss Heart and Stroke Center, the Phillips Family Cancer Center, and the South Fork's only Level III adult trauma center, specialty units that spare East End patients a long trip west to New York City for critical treatment, per SBU News. This year's total marks a $200,000 jump over the $1.6 million raised at the 67th gala in 2025, which had been themed “A Night in Marrakesh,” according to Spotlight Hamptons.
The New ER That Philanthropy Built
Proceeds from galas like this one helped build the $42 million Stony Brook East Hampton Emergency Department, a 22,000-square-foot satellite facility that opened in May 2025. Construction combined a $10 million New York State grant awarded to Stony Brook University Hospital in 2017 with more than $32 million in private donations raised by the Southampton Hospital Association, according to East End Beacon. The facility treated nearly 5,000 patients between Memorial Day and Labor Day in its opening summer and had logged more than 13,500 total patient visits by mid-2026, per The East Hampton Star.
The Summer Party is only one piece of a broader summer fundraising calendar. The foundation kicked off its 2026 benefit lineup on July 9 with the 6th Annual East Hampton Emergency Department Luncheon at Maidstone Club, moderated by journalist Katie Couric, an event that alone has raised more than $1.5 million for the East Hampton facility since it began, according to Modern Luxury. Financially, the foundation operates on a substantial scale even beyond gala nights: its most recent IRS Form 990 filing showed total annual revenue of $19,953,326 against total expenses of $28,300,000 for fiscal year 2024, according to ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer.
A Legacy Dating to 1958
First held in 1958, the Annual Summer Party is recognized as the longest-running charitable fundraiser in the Hamptons, a nearly seven-decade tradition as the South Fork's premier healthcare benefit. The hospital itself has an even longer history, founded as an independent community institution in 1909 before officially merging into the Stony Brook Medicine academic healthcare system on August 1, 2017, according to Newsday. That merger paired local donor support raised through the Southampton Hospital Association and its foundation with university research networks and state-backed capital investment.
The stakes of that funding pipeline have shown up repeatedly in emergency rooms across the South Fork this summer. Hoodline has reported on a salmonella scare that sent 58 patients to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital during peak ER traffic, as well as a fatal pedestrian crash on Deerfield Road and a Sebonac Inlet drowning that both routed victims through the same hospital system. Those cases, along with a Sag Harbor boat crash and a Christmas Day DWI collision in East Hampton, underscore why the money raised at Wickapogue Road doesn't stay at the party. It flows straight into the emergency rooms treating the South Fork's residents and visitors alike, all year long.
