Eliot H. Lumbard
Graduating class: 1942
Inducted into Hall of Fame: 2023
Hall of Fame Category: Lifetime Achievement
Eliot was born in Fairhaven, MA on May 6, 1925 and attended the Anthony School before entering and graduating from Fairhaven High School in 1942. After graduation from FHS in 1942 with war raging Eliot entered World War II as one of the first graduates of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at King’s Point, NY, and he sailed on Liberty ships as a 3rd and 2nd mate carrying troops and bombs.
After the war ended Eliot enrolled in the Wharton School of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania and then graduated from Columbia Law School. Eliot held a number of prominent positions in New York State law enforce- ment and was an advisor to Governor Nelson Rockefeller as well as Scotland Yard. But none of his work produced more headlines that his pursuit of the mob in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
In the late 1950’s as an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of N.Y. Eliot had been prosecuting corruption inside the IRS when he joined the newly formed State Investigation Commission that had been created to fight organized crime and improve policing. Eliot went on to become the chief counsel for the New York State Commission of Investigation, directing a select unit of 50 state troopers in battling corruption and organized crime, including a raid on the mob’s Apalachin Meeting, in which he and his troopers surrounded a meeting of 100 Mafia bosses from around the nation, held in a house in the woods of upstate New York. It is said that the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover refused to acknowledge the existence of the Mafia until 58 Mafia bosses, including Vito Genovese, Carlo Gambino and Joseph (“Joey Bananas”) Bonnano were captured in the raid.
Eliot was next appointed as Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s Special Assistant Counsel for Law Enforcement. While in that position Eliot proposed the creation of a School of Criminal Justice, eventually established at the State University of NY in Albany, and he created the New York State Information and Intelligence System, which allowed the police of jurisdictions across the United States to share information about the activities of highly mobile and well-organized criminals.
Other states and the United Kingdom’s Scotland Yard hired Eliot as an advisor as well. Throughout most of these years and beyond Mr. Lumbard practiced law in downtown New York City as a litigator, an expert in maritime law and as a trustee in large and complex bankruptcies. In retirement Eliot launched the American Maritime History Project from an office at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, King’s Point. The project has thus far produced two books, “The Way of the Ship” and “In Peace and War,” on the key contributions of our merchant marine throughout American history.
Eliot Lumbard died on November 6, 2013 at the age of 88 at his home in Nashua, NH. He is survived by a brother Alden who graduated from FHS in 1953 and lives in South Yarmouth, MA and a son John, and two daughters: Ann and Susan, as well as four granddaughters.