A Lewiston native who went on to become a notable New York dealer, collector and curator of art and rare books died in a snorkeling accident Friday, leaving behind a shocked family and a grieving art community.

John McWhinnie Jr. was on vacation in the British Virgin Islands with his wife, Maria Beaulieu, when the pair were carried out to sea by a riptide while swimming near a coral reef Friday afternoon, said Lisa Paradis, his older sister who now lives in New Jersey.

A man on the beach heard their cries for help and swam out to save them, Paradis said. The man was able to rescue Beaulieu, but when he went into the water again to help McWhinnie, he was unable to find him, she said. Rescue boats found him near the reef, floating in the water and unresponsive, about half an hour later. Attempts to revive him were unsuccessful. He was 43.

McWhinnie graduated from Lewiston High School in 1986. He was a dedicated scholar and athlete, his sister said, an honors student who led the school’s tennis team to victory in the state championship his senior year.

He was valedictorian of his class at Boston College, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in philosophy in just four years, Paradis said. He had nearly completed a doctorate at Fordham University when he was lured away to work for Glenn Horowitz, a rare book dealer and gallery owner in East Hampton, N.Y., she said.

While working in the Columbia University rare book and manuscript library, “he had the opportunity to look at and touch original manuscripts” by the likes of Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Tennessee Williams, Paradis said. The experience unveiled his calling to find and curate obscure and unusual pieces of literary history, she said.

After managing Horowitz’s gallery in East Hampton for several years, they opened a Manhattan store bearing McWhinnie’s name in 2005.

His literary and artistic tastes had always been broad, she said, and friends and clients described his personal and business collections as a mix of high literature and pulp novels, vintage erotica and avant-garde photography and artwork.

McWhinnie used his bookstore as a gallery space as well, showing work from artists both established, such as Richard Prince, and unknowns. He worked to “juxtapose art and literature in avant-garde ways,” Paradis said, and combined . . . “the spiritual and the profane.”

McWhinnie was “the only one to deal in a manner that informed both the book world and the art world,” wrote a client, Adam Lindemann, in a eulogy on GalleristNY.com.

“The way that he presented things was in a very unique and unusual way,” Paradis said.

McWhinnie met his wife, now a jewelry designer, while working at Northeast Bank’s check-processing operation on Lisbon Street in 1983, Paradis said. Beaulieu’s parents and siblings, originally from Houlton, now live in Greene, Lewiston and Auburn, she said.

The days since McWhinnie’s death have been difficult for his family, Paradis said. His parents, John and Betty McWhinnie, who still live in Lewiston, are waiting for his body to be returned to hold services, Paradis said, but that process has been delayed.

Paradis said she thought her brother would want his friends and family to continue living life to the fullest, just as he had done, despite the tragedy. “Certainly he did amazing things in the short amount of time that he lived.”

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