Chris Stickney of East Islip, Newins Ford general manager, dies at 66

Chris Stickney of East Islip and Venice, Florida, took the term “family business” to heart.

Vice president and general manager of the Bay Shore car dealership Newins Ford, a Main Street mainstay since 1935, he presided over an enterprise owned by the Stickneys for the last 46 years. His brother Charles is president, his son Matthew is sales manager, and three nephews hold positions there.

Yet for all his business success, the family part always mattered more.

“Adventurous,” said one of his six children, Kirstin Fusto, trying to sum up her father. “When we went on vacation, we went on vacation! We’d go skiing in Colorado, Canada, Vermont, we went to Hawaii, Florida, everywhere. He would just round everybody up and go.” At one point that even included a family houseboat they would take to Fire Island for a week.

“He was adventurous,” agreed Mike Korb, of Islip, a friend since elementary school. Of their circle of pals, he said, “If Chris was up for a good time, we were all there with him. ... One friend lives in New Hampshire and had a tuna boat in Maine. We fished for giants a couple of times. A couple of fun times,” he added, his voice turning wistful.

Boats, indeed, were a passion of Stickney’s; he owned several over the years.

An even bigger passion was the Grateful Dead.

“He was a Deadhead. He was,” said his wife, Theresa Stickney, with good-natured resignation. “And I loved him for it. And sometimes I hated him for it,” she continued, jocularly.

Fusto said she and her siblings “know all the music by heart."

“And it's going to be playing at his wake,” said his wife. “So it's all good.”

Chris Stickney died of a pulmonary embolism — a blood clot in the lungs — on March 12 at age 66 in a Sarasota, Florida, hospital while wintering in that state. In September he had undergone a mitral valve replacement following hospitalization for bacterial endocarditis.

Born Feb. 5, 1959, in Bay Shore, Christopher Arthur Stickney was the youngest of four children of Charles Edward Stickney, who purchased Newins Ford from his boss, co-founder Horace Newins, in 1979, and homemaker Ann Juliet Olsen Stickney.

After graduating in 1977 from Bay Shore High School — where he had lettered in soccer and baseball, said his wife — he attended Quinnipiac University in Connecticut and Hofstra University in Hempstead before finishing up at Michigan’s Northwood University, his family said.

He then joined his father’s car dealership, where he thrived.

He married Jamie Hoffman in 1986, divorcing in 2011. Stickney shortly afterward began a committed relationship with Theresa Lotito, whom he married in February 2022.

Stickney was a member of the Lions Club, the Southward Ho Country Club in Bay Shore and the Bayberry Beach & Tennis Club in Islip.

In addition to his wife and Fusto, of Brightwaters, Stickney is survived by another daughter, Jennifer Stickney, of Brightwaters; sons Eric Stickney, of Claremont, New Hampshire, Matthew Stickney, of Bay Shore, Christopher Stickney, of Long Beach, and Michael Stickney, of Brightwaters; sisters Ann Blanco, of Naples, Florida, and Maureen Sherman, of St. Augustine, Florida; brother Charles Stickney, of Bayport-Blue Point; and three grandchildren.

Visitation will be Tuesday from 3 to 8 p.m. at Fredrick J. Chapey & Sons Funeral Home in West Islip, followed by a funeral Mass at 10:15 a.m. Wednesday at St. Patrick Roman Catholic Church in Bay Shore and interment at St. Patrick Cemetery.