“He was the oldest living person born in Montauk,” said Jim Grimes of his father, Vincent Elias Grimes, who died on Sunday at home in the hamlet, at the age of 93.
“He was literally born about 600 yards away from where he died, and rarely lived more than a mile from where he was born,” said his son.
Mr. Grimes was born in his grandparents’ house on South Elroy Drive on Sept. 17, 1928, to Charles Edgar Grimes and Maria Celia Petitpas. His grandparents had come to Montauk from Nova Scotia following the collapse of the cod fishing industry there.
His grandfather had built the family home — a Sears Roebuck farmhouse — himself, on one of the first plots of land sold by Carl Fisher as he was creating “the Miami of the North.” Vincent Grimes arrived after the house was completed. Soon after, his father began as a caretaker for the Walter McCaffrey family, who owned the “Windmill House” at Sandpiper Hill, just west of Ditch Plain.
Vincent lived in that house on Sandpiper Hill through the Hurricane of 1938. “He was in school the day of the hurricane,” said his son. “The town was cut in two when the ocean broke through. He remembered that day very well.”
After graduating from the Montauk School in 1942 and from East Hampton High School in 1946, Mr. Grimes went to work as a mate on charter boats, in Montauk during the summers and during the winters in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He later joined the Navy, and was stationed until 1954 in California and deployed on the U.S.S. Norton Sound, a missile ship. In 1952, he and Susan Elizabeth Deans, whom he’d met in Montauk through mutual friends, were married in the Bronx.
They moved back to Montauk to live, where “he picked up where he left off,” working on charter boats before buying and operating his own, named “Cigarette.” From 1965, they lived on Second House Road.
Mr. Grimes never remarried after his wife died in 1993, but several years later, acquaintances organized a date with an old high school friend of his, Betty Cobb, and they were together until she died in December 2019.
The younger Mr. Grimes recalled that his father was the spark behind a longtime Montauk tradition, the annual Blessing of the Fleet. While on the West Coast with the Navy, he had witnessed Portuguese tuna fishermen blessing their boats before going out to sea. “He knew that most of the fishermen in Montauk couldn’t afford to insure their boats,” said his son. “The next best thing, he figured, was trust in God. So, in 1956, he organized the first Blessing of the Fleet.”
Every spring since then, even though he wasn’t a fisherman himself — “the first one in his family since 1639 to not be a fisherman” — Mr. Grimes took part in the blessing.
In 1960, he left the charter boat industry and opened Vinnie’s Service Station in Montauk, where he worked as a mechanic. He retired about 30 years later, but continued to work part-time for the East Hampton Historical Society and as a tour guide at the Montauk Lighthouse.
“He loved being a tour guide,” said his son. “He would absolutely lie about the history he didn’t remember, or, if he didn’t like it, he would just rewrite it. He had a really interesting sense of humor.”
“Through his life, he immersed himself in different things for periods of time. He was a frustrated cowboy and an avid golfer. He was never a very good golfer, but he was an enthusiastic golfer.”
He taught his sons Morse code, his son recalled. “I’m pretty sure he was training us for the French Resistance, because it really went beyond basic kids’ stuff.”
“When we were 8 or 9, he bought us muskrat traps. He figured we’d learn about nature and become great entrepreneurs by selling our pelts to Montgomery Ward.” They never made it in the fur business, but Vincent Grimes didn’t give up easily. In the late ‘60s, his son said, the family had “about 250 chinchillas” living in the basement.
Mr. Grimes was active with the Boy Scouts, whose Good Deed Award was presented to him in 2014, and was a member of many civic and religious organizations, including the Society of the Holy Name, the Knights of Columbus (he was a fourth-degree Knight and Grand Knight from 1989 to 1991); the Montauk Lions (where he was a past president), and the Montauk Fire Department, where he was a captain. In 2014, the Montauk Chamber of Commerce named him its Man of the Year, and in 2019, he was named one of the Montauk Friends of Erin’s and East Hampton Kiwanis’s Legends of Fishing.
In addition to his son James, another son, Keith Grimes, survives; both men live in Montauk. He leaves five grandchildren: Lee and David Grimes of Montauk, Noah Grimes of Paradise, Tex., and Niamh Hegerty and Peter Grimes of East Hampton. Four great-grandchildren survive as well: Lindsey and Calley Grimes of East Hampton and Silas and Tucker Grimes of Montauk.
He also leaves three brothers, Daniel Grimes of East Hampton, William Grimes of Pennsylvania, and Charlie Grimes of Chapel Hill, N.C.
The family will receive visitors at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton tomorrow from 3 to 5 p.m. and from 7 to 9 p.m. Father Liam McDonald of Montauk’s St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church will officiate on Saturday at a 10:30 a.m. funeral service, with burial to follow at Most Holy Trinity Cemetery on Cedar Street in East Hampton.
Memorial contributions can be directed to the Montauk Historical Society.
