Ellis French, 80, Prominent Montauker
Ellis Roemer French, a successful and influential Montauk businessman who began the resort there known as the Panoramic View, died at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center on Aug. 10, following complications of open-heart surgery to replace a more than 40-year-old prosthetic mitral valve, one of the oldest original valves still functioning. He was 80 years old and had been hospitalized for 23 days.
A resident of Montauk since 1942, Mr. French, his late brother, John French, and his father, Earl French Sr., began developing the resort in 1956. His father also founded the First National Bank in East Hampton (later the Bank of the Hamptons and Suffolk County National Bank). His mother, Kate Roemer French, joined the Panoramic effort after her husband died, in 1962, and with her two sons continued to develop and manage it; it was completed in 1972.
After his brother’s death at an early age in 1976, Mr. French and his mother continued the family business. He took over as president in 1984, following his mother’s death.
His father, who had come to Montauk in 1928, conducted Christian Science services there with Maude Gurney and fished with Gus Pitts. He purchased the oceanfront land where the Panoramic View is today in the early 1940s for $20,000, a sum he thought so extravagant that it would never be recovered.
Over the years, the Panoramic View has had strong employee and guest loyalty, with the median tenure for full-time employees about 20 years, Mr. French’s family said. They also said he would want to thank the hundreds of devoted Panoramic View employees over the years, including Herbert Anthony, who is its longest surviving employee, with over five decades of service.
“This loyalty is almost unheard of in the hospitality industry and speaks to the way Ellis French treated his associates,” his family said. “His longstanding guests and associates were two of his proudest accomplishments when it came to the Panoramic View. With a huge contribution from his late brother . . . the Panoramic stands as a testament to Ellis’s great vision, hard work, and keen management.”
Mr. French ran the company singlehandedly until 1998, when his son, who is also John French, returned from California to help run the resort. A fixture in Montauk, Mr. French never retired from his herculean 80-hour workweek. The resort was sold in January 2007, over half a century after it was begun. Today, it is part of the Residences at Gurney’s Inn Resorts.
In addition to running the Panoramic, Mr. French was an assistant Cub Scout leader in East Hampton, president of the East Hampton Business Alliance, and active in the Montauk Chamber of Commerce. Along with Paul Monte, he had been honored at a chamber gala.
He was born on Feb. 4, 1938, in Forest Hills, Queens, to Earl Raymond French and the former Kate Pier Roemer.
He met Pat Collins at Adelphi College in the late 1950s; they were married in 1961. She said she remembers meeting Earl, Kate, and John for the first time as she was sitting on a sawhorse at the construction site during the early years of the Panoramic’s development, in September 1957. They were married 57 years, and built a house in East Hampton in 1972.
Besides his wife and the Panoramic, Mr. French was devoted to a residence on the island of St. Barth, appropriately called La Vue Panoramique. As one of the first Americans to build there, in the late 1970s, Mr. French’s family said he brought the same focus to its construction as he had to the Panoramic View.
His wife and children, Cathy French of Boca Raton, Fla., and John French of Port Orange, Fla., survive, as do two grandchildren, two nephews, and four nieces.
There will be no wake or service, in keeping with Mr. French’s wishes, but a celebration of his life is expected to be held in the fall.
Private burial will take place at Fort Hill Cemetery in Montauk. His family suggested memorial donations to the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, P.O. Box 901, Wainscott, 11975, or to the Montauk Fire Department, 12 Flamingo Avenue, Montauk 11954.