The 90s were good to Seymour Lavine. Not necessarily the decade of the ‘90s, though those years were good too, but this time it is the nine years he spent between his 90th and 99th birthdays.
A ball of energy, Lavine worked up until he was 96. He also received a very special honor from the U.S. Army when he was 98. He was never one to watch life pass him by, said his son Ken Lavine, of Atlanta.
“He was always learning new things, meeting new people,” his son said. “He didn’t like sitting around, he liked to experience things.”
Seymour Stanley Lavine, of Atlanta, died Oct. 15 from complications of prostate cancer, eight weeks shy of his 100th birthday. A private memorial service is planned for Nov. 4. SouthCare Cremation and Funeral Society was in charge of the cremation.
Lavine, who was born in Baltimore, Md., and spent his early years in New York, came to Atlanta in 1936. He was selling clothes to department stores when World War II began, and he quit his job with plans to enter the Army through officer candidate school. He was denied admission because of his eyesight, according to a 2010 Atlanta Journal-Constitution interview with Lavine, so instead of waiting to be drafted, the 29-year-old joined the infantry in 1941. In 1945, a firefight with members of the Imperial Japanese Army on Luzon in the Philippines, qualified Lavine for the Bronze Star. No one knows why it took more than six decades, one official called it an “administrative glitch,” but the Army finally awarded him the Bronze Star in 2010 for heroism in combat.
He returned to Atlanta, and the fashion business, in 1946. He retired in 1988, only to become the director of Emory University’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in 1992.
At the time, running the Institute was the “furthest thing” from his mind, he told a reporter.
“I’m very enthusiastic about the whole darn thing,” he told a reporter in 1992. “It makes me feel good to do it. For me, it’s not just a job, but an entirely different and so much more satisfying ballgame.” He was 79 then, and he held the position, which entailed putting together eight-week curriculums each quarter, until after his 96th birthday.
His skills as a salesman came in handy as he put the classes together and worked with the Institute, said his daughter, Janis Lavine, of Beverly, Mass.
“He was a serious businessman, but he could ham around and tell jokes too,” she said. “It seemed to be a perfect combination for him.”
About mid-way into his second career, his wife Lillian Schacht Lavine, who he’d married in 1949, died. A few years later, when he was 88, he married his second wife, Constance, who added an immeasurable amount of joy to his life, his children said.
“He wanted to enjoy the rest of his life,” Ken Lavine said, of his father. “And that is exactly what he did.”
In addition to his wife and children, survivors include a son Sanford Lavine of Alameda, Calif; and two grandchildren.
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