At the age of about 15, Julio N. Tubatan left Ecuador for Montauk, working at Gurney’s Inn for three years before returning to his home country, and in 1980, emigrated to the United States for good, living briefly in Queens, before returning to Montauk, where he would stay for the next 37 years and would raise a family of his own.
He was one of nine children. His entire family eventually joined him and his oldest brother in the U.S. They were among the first Ecuadorean immigrants to settle in Montauk.