A.J. McAllister Sr.

Anthony J. McAllister Sr., former president and chairman of the board of the towing and marine transportation company Mc- Allister Brothers Inc., died recently at St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center in New York City. He was 85 years old.

Mr. McAllister was one of 10 children of James P. McAllister, the eldest son of Capt. James P.

McAllister who founded the Mc- Allister company in 1864 and put the first McAllister tugboat to work in New York Harbor. The tugboat fleet of the company, distinguished by red and white smokestacks, has long been a familiar sight in the Harbor.

Mr. McAllister attended Stevens Institute of Technology, from which he graduated in 1921, and worked in the family business for his entire life, starting in 1915 as quartermaster on the Bear Mountain, a sidewheeler Hudson River excursion boat operated by the family.

A Navy quartermaster during World War I, he later went to sea aboard one of the 40-odd War Shipping Board tankers managed by the McAllister organization, operated coal-fired steam lighters in New York Harbor, installed the first diesel marine engine in a New York tugboat in 1925, and worked for McAllisters' Yankee Salvage Company.

Mr. McAllister was principal officer of Sullivan Dry Docks in Brooklyn, N.Y., and during World War II, he supervised 3,500 men in the construction of 20 patrol boats for use by the Navy in antisubmarine operations in the North Atlantic.

For the next 20 years, he and his brothers, James P. and Gerard M., supervised the expansion of the McAllister maritime operations to ports along the East coast, Puerto Rico, the Netherlands Antilles and into deepsea activities.

He became chairman of the company in 1954 and retired in 1974.

A founder and commander of the Robert L. Hague Post in Manhattan, the largest marine post of the American Legion, Mr. Mc- Allister was also president and a member of the board of the Prospect Park South Association.

He was awarded the Stevens Honor Award in 1978 by his alma mater, the Stevens Institute of Technology.

Mr. McAllister is survived by his wife, Marjorie Buckley; three daughters, Patrice M. Guiney, Maijorie M. McAllister, and Eileen F. Donovan; five sons, Anthony J. Jr., Donald G., Brian A., Bruce A. and Michael J.; three sisters, Isabel Etzel, Joan Smith, and Justine Roach; two brothers, James P. and Gerard M.; 26 grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

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