Jim Guinan | Founded iconic bar, 83

Jim Guinan, 83, the founder of an iconic Irish bar and general store in a New York City suburb that became the subject of a memoir by a Wall Street Journal columnist, has died.

Mr. Guinan died Wednesday in Tampa, Fla., from heart failure, his family said.

He was the founder of Guinan's Country Store and Pub in Garrison, 50 miles north of Manhattan. The store closed Jan. 31, 2008, after nearly 50 years and Mr. Guinan moved to Lutz, Fla., to live with a daughter and her husband.

The pub became nationally known when Wall Street Journal writer Gwendolyn Bounds moved to the town off the Hudson River after 9/11 and wrote about Guinan's in the book Little Chapel on the River.

In the preface to her memoir, Bounds wrote: "This is the story of a place, the kind of joint you don't find around much anymore, a spot where people wander in once and return for a lifetime."

For some people, she wrote, going to Guinan's "was something of a religion. . . . There was even a pastor of sorts - Jim - who on a good night could tell a story that might run as long as a Sunday sermon." - AP