Vincent Smyth Sr., former Huntington school board member, dies at 86
Vincent Smyth Sr., a former member of the Huntington school board, died March 6 at age 86. Credit: Smyth family
A high school dropout who emigrated from Ireland and eventually became a partner in a Huntington law firm and an elected school board official member, Vincent Smyth Sr. died of natural causes at his home on Hutchinson Island in Stuart, Florida, on March 6. He was 86.
“He had had a series of illnesses for the last 30 years,” said his son, attorney and Huntington Town Supervisor Edmund J. Smyth, mentioning various cancers and Parkinson’s disease. But of his father’s tenacity and ability to recover, he added puckishly, “He was very proud of the fact that he outlived almost all his doctors!”
“He fought medical issues for quite some time, but he had the strength to overcome those issues and continue on,” said his longtime friend, retired accounting firm partner Arthur Roche, of Greenlawn. “He accepted those medical issues calmly and without complaint.”
As an attorney specializing in real estate, “He was hungry and ambitious and smart,” said another decadeslong friend, former law firm partner Anthony Curto, of Hypoluxo Island in Manalapan, Florida. “He saw the law as a way to make money and approached it very practically: law as a vehicle for real estate, and real estate as a vehicle for investment. He wanted to give his family the security he never had, and he became enormously wealthy.”
Born Oct. 14, 1937, in Dublin’s Glasnevin neighborhood, Vincent Anthony Smyth was the youngest of four children of Joseph and Mary Hoban Smyth. After difficulties in his homeland, he ventured to New York in 1959. “The family joke has always been, he got kicked out of two high schools and one country,” said his son.
Following jobs in Manhattan and Chicago, where a sister lived, he joined the U.S. Army, rising to sergeant by the time of his honorable discharge in 1965. He obtained a high school equivalency degree and U.S. citizenship.
He met Mary “May” Taggart, a fellow employee at an American Airlines ticketing office in Manhattan, and they married in 1968 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Smyth earned a bachelor’s degree in business from the City College of New York and a master's degree in business administration from Baruch College, going on to attend New York Law School at night while working for a savings and loan association.
By then the family had moved to Huntington Village, and then later to Cold Spring Hills and Huntington Bay. After their four children were grown, Smyth and his wife became snowbirds, with a townhouse in Huntington Village.
After starting in private practice in Huntington, Smyth in 1978 was named a partner at what became Curto, Meservey, Armstrong, Waller & Smyth. With a later partner at that firm, Smyth went on to co-found Smyth & Lack. That dissolved, and Smyth retired after James Lack, a state senator, was named a judge.
Smyth was a member of the Huntington Board of Education from 1975 to 1978 and a chairman of the government relations committee of the Long Island Association’s Small Business Council. He was active in the Elks and Kiwanis clubs and the Huntington Republican Club, and an avid golfer at the Huntington Crescent Club.
In addition to his son, Edmund, of Huntington, he is survived by his wife, Mary, of Stuart, Florida; daughters Elizabeth Flynn, of Charlotte, Vermont, and Nancy Donahue, of Incline Village, Nevada; son, Vincent Jr., of Huntington; and 12 grandchildren. Three older sisters died before him.
Visitation will be held at M.A. Connell Funeral Home in Huntington Station from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. Monday. A funeral Mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Tuesday at the Church of St. Patrick in Huntington. Burial will be at St. Patrick's Cemetery in Huntington.
