Frank Palamara, of Riverhead, COO of NYSE, dies at 99

It can be said with certainty that retired certified public accountant, finance-industry executive and New York Stock Exchange vice president and chief operating officer Frank Palamara made a good accounting for himself in life.

And beyond his professional accomplishments, “He was probably one of the most positive, happy people that anyone’s ever met,” said his son, Tom Palamara, of Sayville. “You would say, ‘Hey, Dad, how you doing?’ He’d go, ‘I’m doing great. If I were any better, I’d have to be two people!’”

Frank Palamara — who split his time between Riverhead and Phoenix, Arizona, and died of natural causes Feb. 27 at home on Long Island at age 99 — remained “just a regular guy,” said Northport’s Joe Eyring, a retired executive in the finance industry and a friend for 70 years.

“He had these big jobs but he never ignored people or anything like that,” Eyring added. “He got along with most everybody he had contact with, both in a personal way and a business way. And everybody that had contact with him couldn’t help but like him.”

That affability helped him balance family and work, according to his son.

“In his career he was clawing to get to the top and do the best he could to provide for his family,” his son said. “On weekdays we wouldn’t see my dad until seven o’clock at night when he got home from the city. And then that’s when we would have dinner. We would eat as a family. And that was mandatory.”

His son worked with him to the end at the four-location Long Island ice-skating facility The Rinx, which Frank Palamara bought and took over in 2004 as a retirement endeavor. Recalled his son, “He was my father, he was my friend, he was my boss, he was my mentor.”

Francis Joseph Palamara was born July 13, 1925, in Brooklyn, the elder of two children of accountant Giuseppe Bartholomew “Joseph” Palamara and Italy-born Marie E. Spina Palamara. He graduated from Brooklyn’s all-boys Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in 1943.

He then during World War II enlisted in the Navy, which sent him for training at various colleges. He became a Navy ensign on July 9, 1945, and eventually was assigned to the light cruiser USS Little Rock. After his discharge in 1946, he belatedly was commissioned a lieutenant junior grade in July 1948.

By then he was enrolled at St. John’s University, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in business administration in 1950. He joined the firm where his father worked, Ross Bros. and Montgomery, which evolved to the present-day PricewaterhouseCoopers, He earned his CPA certificate in 1955.

He then served executive positions at five corporations through September 1972, when he was named executive vice president and chief operating officer of the New York Stock Exchange. In that capacity he helped the Big Board consolidate its regulatory and surveillance activities into a single unit in 1973, and helped introduce an updated ticker tape, Consolidated Tape‐Network A, in 1975. In 1977, he gave Oleg A. Troyanovslcy, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, a tour of the trading floor.

After leaving the Exchange the following year, he worked for two more corporations before retiring in 1987. He continued to serve as a business consultant and on the boards of several firms and such nonprofits as Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts. In 2004 he bought the existing Long Island company The Rinx, which continues to operate today.

Palamara married Dorothy A. “Dede” White in August 1948 and the couple moved first to East Meadow and then Searingtown. At various points they also lived in Stamford, Connecticut, and Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. From the late 1990s until moving to Riverhead in the early 2000s, the couple made their home on their 60-foot yacht in Port Jefferson, spending cold months at the New York Athletic Club in Manhattan.

After his wife died in December 2005, Palamara subsequently was married to Mary Sposato from January 2007 until her death in July 2012, and Virginia “Ginny” Nolan-Palleschi, whom he married in March 2014 and who survives him.

Palamara, an avid golfer who hit the links every Sunday before church, said his son, was a member of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary.

Throughout his life, said Tom Palamara, “He had faith in that combination of family, God and country. And he loved being in the Navy — he wore his USS Little Rock hat every day.”

In addition to his son and wife, Palamara is survived by another son, J. Francis Palamara, of Milton, Georgia; daughters, Mary Ann Gessner of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, Diane Trupia of Fort Myers, Florida, Ann Malone of Phoenix, Arizona, Louise Sullivan of Rye, Marie Beattie of Lincoln University, Pennsylvania,  and Roberta Carnes of Reading, Massachusetts; 29 grandchildren; and 41 great-grandchildren.

Visitation was held Friday at Tuthill-Mangano Funeral Home in Riverhead. A funeral Mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Saturday  at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in Riverhead, followed by burial at the Cemetery of the Holy Rood in Westbury. Palamara was cremated.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the nonprofit family organization Colin’s Joy Project, named for a late great-grandson.