Henry E. Bessire, a longtime West Tisbury seasonal resident and Vineyard Conservation Society board member, died unexpectedly in New York city on Nov. 18.. He was 76.

A management and fund-raising consultant for cultural institutions and institutions of higher education, Mr. Bessire had played a prime role in the 1960s development of New York city’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. He had also served as vice president for development at his alma mater, Princeton University, from 1969 through the 1970s.

Henry Bessire was born in Louisville, Ky., June 28, 1935, a son of the late William and Dorothea (Broecker) Bessire. (His sons, Paul and Mark, point out that 1935 was a notable year in Kentucky not only because of their father’s birth, but because it was then that the famous horse, Omaha, won the Kentucky Derby, the Belmont races and, finally, the Triple Crown at Preakness.)

Henry Bessire was graduated from Atherton High School in Louisville in 1953 and showed an early aptitude for leadership by being his class president. After graduation, he followed in the footsteps of his father, a 1929 graduate of Princeton University, and was graduated himself from Princeton in 1957. During college summers, he developed what became a lifelong devotion to travel by visiting Europe and was part of the first group of students from the West to visit the Soviet Union in 1957 for an International Youth Festival. He proudly remembered being briefly detained by Soviet authorities for daring to throw a Frisbee in Moscow’s Red Square.

After graduation, he worked in the annual giving office at Princeton and served in the U.S. Army before returning to Louisville. In 1959, he married Louise Helm, whose uncle Harold Helm, was a longtime Chilmark seasonal resident. So it was that Henry Bessire’s acquaintance with the Vineyard began.

In the early years of their marriage, the young couple lived in Brooklyn Heights, N.Y., where Mr. Bessire worked first for the investment firm of Kersting Brown and then for the investment bank of Morgan Stanley. But soon, as plans for the cultural complex at Lincoln Center began to take shape, Mr. Bessire was hired by John D. Rockefeller 3rd, chairman of the Lincoln Center board, and William Schuman, the president of Lincoln Center, to build a development office for the burgeoning project. During Mr. Bessire’s years there, the New York State Theatre (now the Koch Theatre), the Metropolitan Opera House and the Lincoln Center Theatre were all opened at the West 65th street site. A longtime art lover and collector, he also proudly oversaw the installation of the Marc Chagall windows in the opera house and the David Smith art work in the Lincoln Center Theatre.

Then in 1969, with Lincoln Center an obvious success, and some Princeton alumni dismayed by the university’s decision to become co-ed, he was invited to return to his alma mater as vice president for development.

Ever a devotee of New York city, however, 12 years later he was lured back to Manhattan to become a partner in the nonprofit consulting firm, Brakeley, John Price Jones (now Brakeley Briscoe). In that role, he consulted on fund-raising for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the University of Pittsburgh, Kenyon College in Ohio, Colgate University and Long Island University, among other institutions. His passionate interest in philanthropy, however, extended beyond his professional career and he offered his fund-raising expertise, gratis, to the Take Dance Company in New York, the Helm Foundation of Montclair, N.J. that his wife’s uncle had founded, and the Vineyard Conservation Society that was dedicated to preserving the natural beauty of the Vineyard he so treasured.

Throughout their 52 years together, he and his wife traveled extensively, visited museums and art galleries around the world, collected art with enthusiasm and reveled in the opportunities to enjoy theatre, symphony and ballet that New York city offered to them. It was at a theatre performance that Mr. Bessire suffered the heart attack two weeks ago that would prove fatal.

On the Vineyard, the Bessires decorated the 19th-century Old County Road house they had bought from Mabel Johnson in 1966 with work by West Tisbury artists. There were woodcuts by Ruth Kirchmeier, paintings by Rez Williams, Allen Whiting and Hermine Hull, drawings and collages by Lucy Mitchell and tapestry by Julia Mitchell. The Bessires had acquired their West Tisbury house on a tip from their close friend, the art dealer and their art advisor, Phillip Bruno, who had a home of his own next door.

Long-devoted owners of springer spaniels, the Bessires would walk their dogs eah morning that they were on the Vineyard at Sepiessa or along Old Courthouse Road or in Nat’s Farm Field. In the years when the Harold Helmses had their home above Squibnocket Beach, Henry Bessire would swim with enthusiasm in the waters below the house and sit on the beach or walk the shore for hours. And wherever he was — on the Gay Head Cliffs, Menemsha’s Dutcher Dock or anywhere in the world — the beauty and serenity of the setting sun would leave him spellbound.

A connoisseur of fine wine, pipe tobacco and cigars, the best Kentucky bourbon and good food (his mother’s family had been in the meat-packing business; his father’s in the baking business), he delighted, on the Island, in grilling swordfish and striped bass out-of-doors with family and friends around him. Family and friends were the essential elements in his life and he was deeply interested in the lives of everyone he loved.

“He appreciated beauty in all things — a work of art, a sunset, a moving dance performance, in joy and laughter with his family, in watching his grandchildren playing,” his sons, Paul and Mark said. He valued being part of their lives, their wives’ and children’s lives and took pride in the fact that both sons were in careers in the art field — Paul as deputy director at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, Mark as director of the Portland Art Museum in Maine.

“His legacy will be his infectious enthusiasm for the world around him and the way he taught us, his grandchildren and so many others how to experience life to the fullest,” Paul and Mark said.

He is survived by his wife, Louise Helm Bessire; his son, Mark, and daughter in law, Aimee and their children, Blakey and Clay of Portland, Me.; his son, Paul, and daughter in law Anne and their children, Nicholas and Emma of Brookline; and his two sisters, Honey Morris of San Jose, Calif., and Melanie Adams of Pahrump, Nev.

A funeral was held Saturday at St. Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church in New York. Interment was on Sunday at the West Tisbury Cemetery, with the Rev. Robert Hensley of Grace Episcopal Church in Vineyard Haven officiating. A reception was held following the service at the West Tisbury home of Tad and Judy Crawford.

The family requests that contributions in his memory be sent to the Vineyard Conservation Society, P.O. Box 2189, Vineyard Haven 02568.