Ted Levy often had a bird’s-eye view of what was coming.
As a pilot in the Navy, he looked out for trouble and protected those below. And as an architect, he could see how a building came together long before it came into view on the street.
“He was a man with wide interests,” said Renata Lewy Levy, his wife of almost 55 years. “And he found different ways to explore those interests.”
Mr. Levy died Saturday at home from natural causes. He was 82. A private burial of his ashes will be held in the future. H.M. Patterson & Son, Spring Hill, was in charge of arrangements.
Born in New York but reared in Atlanta, Mr. Levy graduated from Boys High School in 1947. He enrolled at Georgia Tech, where he earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in architecture and structural engineering.
After college, he entered the Navy, where he was able to take up one of his life’s loves: flying. He served for five years, piloting anti-submarine aircraft over the North Atlantic, and after active duty joined the Naval Reserves, where he earned the rank of rear admiral, his wife said.
During his time in the Reserves, Mr. Levy served as commanding officer for what was Naval Air Station Atlanta. He was also on the Naval Institute Press editorial board in the 1980s, when it chose Tom Clancy’s “The Hunt for Red October” as one of its first fiction publications.
“Now you’ve got to realize, during all of this time he was a full-time architect in Atlanta,” said Kenneth E. Myatt, a retired rear admiral.
In his role as an architect, Mr. Levy designed commercial and residential structures. His contributions include Plaza Towers, one of the city’s first residential high-rises, which opened in 1969, and Park Place on Peachtree, which opened in the 1980s.
His projects weren’t all in Atlanta, Mrs. Levy said, noting that in the 1980s her husband took on a large endeavor in Massachusetts, where historic mills in several cities were refurbished.
Mr. Levy retired from the Naval Reserves in 1987, the same year he and a friend, Atlanta architect Cecil Alexander, piloted an open-cockpit Stearman biplane — kind of like Snoopy’s — from Pittsburgh to Atlanta. It was a three-day trip, with only a helmet and goggles for protection from the elements, but it was his brand of excitement.
“He enjoyed a challenge,” said longtime friend Maurice “Ted” Maloof. “And that was a bold thing to do, flying from Pittsburgh. That was a challenge.”
In addition to his wife, Mr. Levy is survived by his daughter, Kim Levy Huhman of Atlanta; sons, Bret Levy of Atlanta, and Keith Levy of Highlands, N.C.; sister, Claire Levy Frankel of Connecticut; and four grandchildren.
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