For more than 20 years, Larry Echikson was a high-ranking bank officer, initially with First National of Atlanta, later a senior vice president with Wachovia.
Among his varied duties, he managed a multi-million dollar loan portfolio, was in charge of Wachovia’s commercial credit card services, and handled relations with foreign-owned corporations doing business in the United States.
Doug Williams of Atlanta, a former Wachovia executive vice president and now the president and CEO of Atlantic Capital Bank, said Mr. Echikson was an expert at corporate banking.
“Larry was very intelligent and adept at advising Wachovia’s major clients on managing their credit, cash flow and employee benefits,” he said. “He also was highly ethical; he cared about the right things and doing them the right way.”
Lately, the 57-year-old Mr. Echikson grew depressed over his inability to find suitable employment after losing his position with Wachovia following its merger with Wells Fargo in 2009.
He took his own life Thursday. His graveside service will be at 2 p.m. Sunday at Arlington Memorial Park. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorial donations in his memory be made to the Schenck School, 282 Mount Paran Road N.W., Atlanta, GA 30327 or Brandon Hall School, 1701 Brandon Hall Drive, Atlanta, GA 30350. Dressler’s Jewish Funeral Care is in charge of arrangements.
For all the effort Mr. Echikson gave his banking responsibilities, he still found time to be a volunteer who produced results.
In 1990 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution profiled him for his handling of the budget of the Georgia chapter of the Hemophilia Foundation and for coordinating a fund-raising drive to send children with hemophilia to a specialized summer camp.
More recently, he helped in the successful effort to make Dunwoody a city, taking the lead of a law enforcement task force that recommended a budget and procedures to establish the city’s police force.
Similarly, he developed an interest in the creation of a municipal court and discovered it would need bailiffs. Rather than burden the new city with paying for such personnel, he and five other Dunwoody residents offered themselves as volunteers. So for the past two years, the six of them helped keep order in the court, twice a week.
In a Brookhaven Reporter article published last May, Mr. Echikson said he and his fellow Dunwoody residents considered this a labor of love.
“Our No. 1 priority is to provide security and safety in the courtroom for defendants, judges, prosecutors and people in the court,” he said.
Mr. Echikson got involved in another police venture three years ago when he noted two plainclothes officers on his law-enforcement panel “looked like slobs with our shirts hanging out,” in the words of one of them, Jay Sampsel of Dunwoody. Their shirts hung out, he said, to enable them to reach quickly for a concealed weapon if the need arose.
Mr. Echikson had a better idea. He devised a shirt with snaps along the side seams that allow police to reach no less quickly for a gun through a tucked-in shirt.
He and his partner, Peter Ducoffe of Sandy Springs, created a company, Concealed Designs, to manufacture the shirts. They have been selling them to police forces across the United States and in Central and South America the past two years, Mr. Ducoffe said.
Surviving are Mr. Echikson’s wife of 32 years, Nancy Sabol Echikson; a daughter and a son, Madeline Echikson and Harris Echikson, both of Dunwoody; his father, Dr. Edward Echikson of Worcester, Pa.; a sister, Clarissa Echikson-Brown of Upper Arlington, Ohio; and a brother, Sidney Echikson of Worcester, Pa.
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