BY JESSICA PARKS
Many Coney Islanders
fondly recall Jimmy Prince
pausing whatever he was
working on to bid the visitors
of his beloved Mermaid Avenue
butcher shop a proper
hello.
“He would be working,
butchering, whatever he was
doing, and he’d wipe his hands
and he’d look up with a big
smile,” said Michael Quinn,
a resident of Coney Island
who grew up visiting Prince’s
butcher shop. “He loved people
visiting him, whether it was
an adult or children. He was
like everybody’s grandpa.”
News of Prince’s death
on May 3 at the age of 89 sent
shockwaves through both
Marine Park, where he lived
nearly all his life, and Coney
Island, where he worked for
over 60 years at Major Markets
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COURIER L 6 IFE, MAY 14-20, 2021
Prime Meats — and where he
was bestowed the nickname
“Major.”
“People in the neighborhood
didn’t know his name
was Jimmy, everyone just
used to call him Major all the
time,” Quinn told Brooklyn
Paper.
Prince joined the Major
Markets team as a 17-year-old
in 1949 and eventually bought
the shop from his longtime
boss and great friend Willy
Palumbo in 1975.
“We called him Uncle
Willy,” said Todd Prince, the
sixth of Major’s seven children,
of the shop’s previous
owner. “He was great to my
dad and he was great to our
family. We all have really fond
memories of Uncle Willy.”
Prince remained proprietor
of “Uncle Willy’s” butcher
shop for nearly 30 years until
Coney Island butcher and Marine Park resident Jimmy Prince died May 3. He is pictured here at G&S Salumeria
and Pork Store in Sheepshead Bay, where he worked part-time after retiring from Major Meats. Todd Prince
he closed up and retired in
2009, but continued working
part-time at G&S Salumeria
and Pork Store on Avenue U in
Sheepshead Bay until 2019.
Those who knew him remember
Major for taking
great joy in serving his community.
The beloved butcher
would often go above and beyond
his daily duties, many
said, and was always grilling
up hamburgers for neighbors
who didn’t have stoves and
hand-delivering goods to those
who moved out of the neighborhood,
or forgot to pick up
something.
“He started doing that at
the butcher shop because a
lot of people at the low-income
houses didn’t have a stove or
couldn’t cook on their own,”
Quinn said, “so he would cook
the best burger I’ve actually
ever had in my entire life.”
He was also known to sell
neighbors food on credit, to
be paid back later, despite
friends’ and family members’
warnings — but he ran his
business the way he wanted,
Prince’s son said, never choosing
to make a buck over helping
a neighbor in need.
A cut above
Beloved ‘Prince of Mermaid
Avenue’ remembered for his
love of Coney Island
Continued on page 22
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