Victor G. Puglisi, owner of Marine Model Co., dies

Whenever a practical joke was pulled, chances are Victor G. Puglisi was at the center of it. Kathleen Kovach of Huntington said her father was just a "big kid" at heart.

Once he put a plastic fly in the family sugar container. When his wife went to pour sugar in the morning, she was horrified by the insect. As she rushed outside to dump the sugar, Puglisi was right behind her, but couldn't laugh at his own prank, his daughter said.

"He was running after her, yelling, 'My fly, my fly,' " she said. The plastic fly was a valuable resource for other pranks, and Puglisi didn't want to lose it.

Puglisi, who for years owned the Marine Model Co. in Halesite, died Sept. 9 of liver cancer at a hospice in Santa Fe, N.M., family said. He was 76.

Puglisi grew up in Huntington and family legend has that his grandfather, Michael Carbone, sold fruits and vegetables to wealthy families in the area, including Teddy Roosevelt at Sagamore Hill.

After graduating from Huntington High School in 1951, Puglisi sold Hoover vacuum cleaners and went to night school to earn a business degree. He worked at Marine Model for several years and then bought the company in 1965. Soon, he was generating annual revenue of $250,000 or more, his daughter said.

The company was known for its elaborately detailed models of historic sailing ships, buildings and military vehicles. He once created a model of the newly designed Lincoln Center in the early 1970s, his daughter said. He closed the company in 1990, and then went on to be a bartender - including at the Brass Rail Restaurant in Manhattan - and an Arthur Murray dance instructor.

Through it all, he maintained his impish charm, his daughter said. "One Christmas, for a gift, he gave his sister a lump of coal," Kovach said, "and for the next 20 years or so that lump of coal made the rounds at Christmas, going to different family members as a practical joke."

He also loved to travel, driving often to Santa Fe to visit his son, Charles Puglisi, and his grandchildren. Puglisi lived in Huntington until early 2009, when he moved to Santa Fe to be near his son's family.

In addition to his daughter and son, Puglisi is survived by his first wife, Clara Richmond of Santa Fe, whom he divorced in 1971; his second wife, Sheila Henn Casey of Huntington; a daughter, Christina Mercier of Huntington; 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Visitation is 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday at A.L. Jacobsen Funeral Home, Huntington. A funeral Mass will be celebrated 9:45 a.m. Friday at the Church of St. Patrick, Huntington.