Eugene E. Prohaske of Montauk was remembered as “a kind and generous man of strong intellect and a humble heart who was always ready to lend a helping hand.” He died on Sept. 4 in Greenlawn at the age of 93.
Mr. Prohaske was a co-owner of Styleart Engraving in New York City. He had been a president of the church council at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Huntington Station and a Boy Scout leader.
The Prohaskes moved to Montauk when he retired, around 2002. There he became active in the Montauk Point Lions Club, serving multiple terms as its president. He enjoyed camping and boating, and was “an experimental chef,” his family said.
He and his wife traveled all over the United States, including to Alaska, and once took a three-month cruise of the Pacific Rim.
He put his woodworking skills to use fashioning birdhouses out of found materials -- driftwood, twigs, shells -- and sold them at Lions Club fairs. “He would advertise them, saying, ‘A house in the Hamptons, $100,’ and he sold them in minutes,” his daughter Gail M. Bonfante recalled.
Mr. Prohaske was born in Queens on Sept. 13, 1932, to Eugene Prohaske and the former Elizabeth Steiniger. He grew up in Ridgewood in that borough, and served in the Navy during the Korean War.
At the age of 19, on Feb. 24, 1952, he married Jean E. Scott. The couple raised their four children in Melville.
His wife died in 2021. In addition to Ms. Bonfante, who lives in St. Augustine, Fla., he is survived by two other daughters, Jill D. Lupo of Palm Coast, Fla., and Susan A. Wagner of Melville, and a son, Eugene W. Prohaske of Greenlawn. He leaves five grandchildren, Olivia Prohaske, Wyatt Prohaske, Luke Prohaske, Ivy Smith, and Audrey Caceres, three great-grandchildren, a sister-in-law, Mary Scott, and five nieces and a nephew.
Memorial donations have been suggested to the Montauk Point Lions Club, P.O. Box 683, Montauk 11954.
