September 20, 1941–April 13, 2026
James Batistick of Glen Ridge, NJ, passed away early Monday morning, leaving behind a legacy as expansive as his 6’3″ frame. Known to most as ‘Big Jim,’ he was a natural salesman, a father figure to many, and a persuasive conversationalist everyone gravitated to in a room. Born in Parma, Ohio, to Alvin and Bernice Batistick—who met in a tuberculosis ward where Bernice was Alvin’s nurse—James grew up in a family where selling was near-religion. As a boy, he watched his father sell roofs throughout the greater Cleveland metro area. James’s first sales job came with the Fuller Brush Company, going door-to-door convincing housewives to buy brooms and cleaning products that they probably didn’t need. The sales bug stayed with him the rest of his life.
James graduated from St. Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Indiana, at the dawn of the computer age. Degree in hand, the Burroughs Corporation hired him to peddle payroll punchcards and adding machines. Over the next twenty years, Burroughs would relocate him to Toledo and back to Cleveland, then onto Detroit. Ultimately James settled in New Jersey, where he would live the rest of his life. For nearly two decades, James worked in Manhattan where he leased mainframes to big institutions like Citibank and Solomon Brothers.
But James’s true passion was boating, even though he couldn’t swim. He owned and operated the Patton Avenue Marina in Oceanport, NJ, where many of his children were subjected to near-indentured servitude. (Some still shudder at the word “varnish.”) In later years, he and his wife Ginny spent summers aboard their Grand Banks trawler, cruising the Intracoastal Waterway from the Jersey Shore to the Florida Keys where they’d vacation with friends. In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, he chartered his 50-foot Gulfstar sailboat in the British Virgin Islands, bringing his entire blended family on sailing adventures they would never forget.
James is survived by his wife Ginny, his seven children— James, Jill, Sandra, William, Craig, Michael, and Holly—their spouses Joy and Ashley, and twelve grandchildren: Elizabeth, James, Mark, Grace, David Jr., John, Madeline, Porter, Joseph, Kristina, Mia, and Ben.
In a life defined by adventure, ambition, and an open heart, his greatest achievement was the love he built—messy, brash, caring, and open to all. He tried to convince each of his children to attend Manhattan College. None of them did. What he gave them was far more valuable: a relentless work ethic, a collaborative spirit, and a mandate to find a way to get along and solve problems together. “You only have one family, so work it out,” he’d say. His family is now absent a gravitational center. He will be deeply missed.
Friends and Relatives are invited to attend the Visitation on Saturday, April 18th from 4-8pm at the O’Boyle Funeral Home, 309 Broad Street Bloomfield. Interment is Private. Please express condolences at www.oboylefuneralhome.com
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