Frank N. Tuma, Captain, Businessman
Frank N. Tuma, one of Montauk’s early charter fishing captains and a business leader and real estate broker, died on Friday at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. He was 93.
Mr. Tuma was born into a fishing family on April 29, 1924. His father, Frank J. Tuma, started the first charter boat business in Montauk after coming to the hamlet with the Coast Guard during World War I. His mother was the former Hilda C. Baker of East Hampton and had insisted that her son be born in Brooklyn where some of her relatives lived. Three days later, the young family arrived in Montauk.
He attended elementary school there, graduated from the East Hampton School, and enrolled at Colgate University.
In a 1995 interview, Mr. Tuma recalled that he first began working as a mate aboard fishing boats when he was on the eighth grade, mostly rod-and-reel “pin-hooking” for porgies. Later he was on the crew of various powerboats, including the Seer, owned by Harry Bellis Hess, a department store magnate, and the Shadow K, which belonged to Carl Fisher, the developer of much of Montauk during the 1920s.
Mr. Tuma had only completed a year at Colgate when the United States entered World War II. He joined the Navy, attending officers training school at Cornell University, and serving for three and a half years commanding a landing craft in the Mediterranean. He left the Navy in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant and graduated from Colgate the following year.
After college, he worked briefly in New York City for the International Business Machines Corporation. Returning to Montauk and marrying the former Marion Walker, he had a boat built for charter fishing, the Gannet, and before long was busy taking out passengers for a variety of seasonal fish. Mr. Tuma went to work as a salesman for the Montauk Beach Company in 1952. In the mid-1950s, the company was sold, renamed AllState Properties, and Mr. Tuma was appointed to oversee its operations at the Surf Club, the Montauk Manor, the Montauk Yacht Club, and the Montauk Water Company. His father had started Tuma’s Dock on Lake Montauk and a tackle shop on the hamlet’s main road, and after his father’s death, in 1961, he took over the family charter fishing business and dockside bait-and-tackle operation.
With AllState, he was involved in deals that included the sale of the Circle in downtown Montauk to Suffolk County and Montauk Downs Golf Course to the State of New York, as well as the sale of the Montauk Airport land and more than 1,000 acres that became Montauk County Park. He sold Tuma’s Dock in the early 1990s, opening the Tuma Real Estate Agency on Montauk Main Street, which his daughter eventually ran. He left the successor firm to AllState in 2001.
In Montauk, Mr. Tuma was a member of the Lions Club, the chamber of commerce, and the Fire Department and its ambulance company. He was the grand marshal of the Friends of Erin’s St. Patrick’s Day parade in 1987 and was honored in 2017 by the Friends of Erin and East Hampton Kiwanis Club as “Fishing Legend of the Year.” He had been elected as an East Hampton Town Trustee and Montauk Fire Department commissioner and was a member of the Southampton Golf Club since 1962.
Mr. Tuma is survived by his children, Frank Tuma of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., and Lexa Dispirito of Montauk, and by three grandchildren. A sister, Vivian Darenberg, died before him, as did his wife.
A funeral Mass for him was said on Tuesday at St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church in Montauk. Memorial donations have been suggested to the Montauk Fire Department, 12 Flamingo Avenue, Montauk 11954, or the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, P.O. Box 901, Wainscott 11975.