Frank Persico, longtime dive boat captain and mechanic, dies at 82

As a longtime dive boat captain, instructor and engine mechanic his fellow owners relied on, Frank Persico was a decades-long mainstay of the Long Island diving community.

He was best known for running the Sea Hawk out of Freeport with partner John Lachenmeyer for 29 years — four years longer than any other dive boat on Long Island, according to Stephen Bielenda, the former Eastern Dive Boat Association president.

Persico, 82, of Little Neck, died March 13 at the Little Neck Care Center in Queens after a five-year battle with Parkinson’s disease.

"Captain Frank was a true dive boat captain pioneer," said Barry Lipsky, president of the Long Island Divers Association. "He knew every shipwreck off the South Shore of Long Island. Many of those shipwrecks were first discovered by Captain Frank. His knowledge and experience of the Atlantic Ocean, scuba diving, dive boats and the repairs of boat engines of any kind opened the world of diving on Long Island for thousands of scuba divers for over six decades."

Persico was born in Astoria, Queens, and his family moved to Little Neck about 1949, his son, Robert Persico, of Little Neck, said. He attended St. Anastasia school in adjacent Douglaston and then was a member of the first graduating class at Martin Van Buren High School in Queens Village in 1961.

Persico enlisted in the Navy the next year and served for four years on amphibious landing ships and minesweepers while based at Little Creek, Virginia. The Navy sent him to its school for engine mechanics, which would set him up for his future career. He also learned to dive in his spare time.

While on leave, he would return to Long Island. On one trip he visited a bar in Rockaway Beach and met Julia Casserly. They were married in1967.

Soon after leaving the Navy, he got a job with Detroit Diesel distributor Henry Knese in College Point, Queens, and worked there for 29 years. When the company folded in 1994, Persico formed a business, Offshore Diesel Services, with his son, who continues to run the Little Neck company.

"He was a high-end diesel mechanic," said Bielenda, former owner of the dive boat Wahoo.

After leaving the Navy, Persico also pursued his interest in diving. He was certified to dive by a local pioneer in the industry, Al Boehm, who operated one of the first dive boats that ran out of Brooklyn, the Terry Bobby. "Because he was a mechanic, Al ended up taking him under his wing," his son said. "Al Boehm pushed him to become a captain, so he became a captain." Persico got a Coast Guard captain’s license to operate vessels up to 100 tons weight.

Eventually, Boehm became the head instructor at Central Skin Divers in Bellmore, which owned a dive boat named Honest Archie berthed in Freeport. Persico and Boehm ran it as co-captains while Persico also became an instructor in the 1970s.

When Central Skin Divers sold its boat, Persico met Lachenmeyer when they were both diving off a boat called the Carol Lynn in Freeport. Lachenmeyer and Persico saw a boat that had been overhauled by Henriques Yachts in New Jersey. "Frank and I decided it might be nice to form a partnership and get our own similar Henriques dive vessel, Sea Hawk, which was built and delivered in 1985," Lachenmeyer said.

The co-owners were a study in contrasts. Persico could be gruff and mercurial, although unfailingly helpful, while Lachenmeyer was laid back and unfazed.

"It was just his nature," his son said. "He was basically no-nonsense. He was hard on some people but he had his reasons for doing things, and he was usually right."

"We had an ideal working relationship from the very beginning of our many years together," Lachenmeyer said.

“After more than 20 years of great dive trips together,” he said, Lachenmeyer sold his portion of the dive business to another diver, Captain Ned Witkin, who remained with Persico. The boat was sold last year to the owner of the Captain Lou fleet in Freeport.

In addition to his wife and son, he is survived by his daughter, Christina, of Park Slope, Brooklyn, and her two children, Annabel and Will.

The family is planning a memorial service in the spring and working to honor Persico's wish that his ashes be spread over the wreck of the USS San Diego off Fire Island.