A love of golf and the Lakes Region might have contributed to the death of long-time summer visitor to Naples who died Oct. 26 of a rare disease transmitted by mosquitoes.

William Walsh, 73, of Newburyport, Mass., spent most of the summer in Naples with his wife, where he became ill from Eastern Equine Encephalitis Sept. 21. He could have contracted the disease in Maine, New Hampshire or Massachusetts, said his wife, Joan.

According to Joan Walsh, her husband got sick very quickly. He started out with typical flu symptoms such as headache, fever and fatigue.

“Within 24 hours he was in a coma, really,” Joan Walsh said Wednesday. Her husband was transferred from Bridgton Hospital to Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston to the Brigham Manor Nursing Home in Newburyport, where he died a little more than a month later.

According to a press release from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, this was the first human case of EEE in Massachusetts since 2006.

In Maine, the disease was first detected in 2005 in horses, birds and mosquitoes in York County, according to a health advisory from the Maine Center for Disease Control. Walsh is the first report of a human case of EEE with possible exposure in Maine.

EEE is a virus spread to humans and horses through the bite of an infected mosquito. Symptoms usually appear three to 10 days after the mosquito bite, according to the Center for Disease Control.

The virus is fatal for around a third of the people who contract it, making it one of the most fatal mosquito-born diseases in the United States. Between 1964 and 2004, there were 220 confirmed cases of the virus in humans in the country.

William and Joan Walsh had spent at least part of their summers camping in Naples for the last 30 years. Her husband was healthy before contracting the virus, Walsh said. He was an avid golfer, and he golfed four times during the week before he became sick.

Walsh said she and her husband made good friends in Naples and she would continue to spend time in the town even without her husband.

“He was just a good guy,” Joan Walsh said. “I’m gonna miss him.”