Frank Mundus Passes--------------9-14-08
As I picked up the Sunday paper.. I learned thet Frank Mundus passed away..a Legend passes..(he actually had a heart attack on my B-day).. RIP Monster man:
They called him the Monster Man. His business was the stuff of tall tales. Gear for the day might include a harpoon, buckets of blood and the patience to wait for a shark to come along and take a bite.
"I was the pioneer of sport fishing for sharks," Frank Mundus, a legendary shark hunter, said in his trademark blunt style on his Web site.
The Monster Man's own words sum up perfectly a life said to have inspired the movie "Jaws" and its roguish Captain Quint, played by the late Robert Shaw.
Mundus died Wednesday of complications from a heart attack suffered Sept. 6, just after he returned to his Hawaii home from a fishing trip in Montauk. He was 82.
"He wanted to be remembered as a pioneer in his sport," said Mundus' wife of 20 years, Jeanette, 46. "He was an extrovert, a straight shooter. He never held back."
The New Jersey-born Mundus came to Montauk in 1951 to be a fisherman. He quickly became a local celebrity, running a charter boat business and taking thrill-seekers out into the Atlantic Ocean to catch sharks.
Great whites, threshers, makos, blue sharks. Whatever it was, Mundus caught it, and he soon earned a reputation as a man who spearheaded a new fishing craze on the East End.
Said to have inspired 'Jaws'
In the 1960s, one of Mundus' customers was the author Peter Benchley, who later penned the novel that would inspire Steven Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster about a megashark terrorizing a cozy island village.
Both the book and the film are memorable for the Quint character, a salty captain obsessed with killing the great white. Mundus was fond of saying he inspired Benchley's writing. His friends and family agree.
Benchley, who died in 2006, denied that he based Quint on Mundus - or any one person - but the locals in misty Montauk yesterday had their own opinions.
"Quint was Frank to a tee. There's no question about it," said Chuck Mallinson, a Montauk fisherman who knew Mundus for 30 years.
"If you saw the movie and knew Frank, you knew it was him."
Bob Rando, another local fisherman who met Mundus in 1952, said, "Frank was an honest guy, but he was a character, just like Quint in the movie ... There was no other Frank Mundus. He did his own thing."
Like his cinematic counterpart, Mundus had his share of run-ins with big sharks, but unlike Quint, he always emerged the victor.
In 1964, he harpooned a 4,500-pound great white off the Amagansett shore. He caught a 3,475-pound great white caught 30 miles off Montauk in the summer of 1986.
A legend in his own right
His shark-catching technique went beyond rods and reels. Though outlawed nowadays, Mundus was known to harpoon whales and use their blubber as an ingredient in his chum, the bloody mixture dumped in the water to attract sharks.
He called his special concoction "Monster Mash."
"No one fished for sharks back then. He really started it all," said Carl Darenberg, who owns the Montauk Marina. "He did a lot for Montauk. He put it on the map."
When "Jaws" sent beachgoers running from the sand in the 1970s, Mundus knew better than to be afraid.
His opinion of the epic film, taken from his Web site: "It was the funniest and stupidest movie I've ever seen because too many stupid things happened in it.
"For instance, no shark can pull a boat backwards at a fast speed with a light line and stern cleats that are only held in there by two bolts."
In 2005, Mundus traded in his pole for a pen, writing "Fifty Years a Hooker," a memoir of his exploits with sharks and other fish.
Mundus is survived by his wife, Jeanette Mundus; and daughters Patricia Mundus, 51, of Greenport; Barbara Crowley, 61, of Billerica, Mass.; and Theresa Greene, 46, of East Hampton.
"I hate to hear politicians use the word 'maverick,'" Patricia Mundus said yesterday. "Frank Mundus taught everyone what a maverick was. He was a real American individual."
Jeanette Mundus said there will be no funeral for her husband, who asked for cremation.
Mundus and his wife moved to Hawaii in 1991, but the shark hunter regularly came back to Montauk each year to continue fishing.
Although he finished his life tending a 20-acre farm on Hawaii, Mundus' real home, say friends and family, was the Cricket II - the 42-foot vessel on which he spent countless days, and nights, with nothing but a cooler full of sandwiches and the hope that a shark would bite.
He didn't need a bigger boat.
A MONTAUK LEGEND
FRANK MUNDUS
Born: Long Branch, N.J., in 1925
Began shark fishing: In 1951, off Montauk
Biggest great white shark he ever caught: 4,500 pounds, caught by harpoon in 1964 off Amagansett.
Books: Author of "Fifty Years a Hooker" and "White Shark Sam Meets the Monster Man" (both written with his wife, Jeanette Mundus)
The 'Jaws' connection: Was Mundus the inspiration for the "Jaws" character Quint?
Neither Peter Benchley nor Steven Spielberg - the author and filmmaker, respectively, behind the terrifying shark story - have ever said that Mundus was in fact the character's inspiration.
That said, for decades, much of the world thought Mundus - that fearless, irascible, burly and sweaty Long Islander - equaled Quint.
"Mundus would head out to sea in his 40-foot fishing boat searching for giant killer sharks that in many cases were bigger than his boat," Dan Rattiner wrote in his book "In the Hamptons," published this year. "He would harpoon them, run with them until they tired, then bring them alongside and shoot them until they were dead. Then he would lash them to the side of his boat and bring them in."
- MATTHEW CHAYES - Newsday 9-14-08
posted by pdspeh69 at 12:07 AM | 3 comments
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