Larry Yago, 82; Dedicated Family Man

Lawrence J. (‘Larry’) Yago passed away on July 26 in Pacific Palisades after an extended illness related to his long struggle with Parkinson’s disease. He was 82. The youngest of seven children, Yago was born June 5, 1922 into an Eastern European immigrant family in the Bronx. He had resided at Sunrise Assisted Living on Sunset the past two years to be near his son’s family in the Palisades. His academic aspirations at the City College of New York were cut short during the Depression by the need to support his widowed mother. In 1939, he moved to Washington, D.C. to work in the Roosevelt administration’s New Deal Federal Housing Administration. With the outbreak of World War II, he was drafted into the Army Air Corps. His fluent French landed him a translator assignment to Barksdale Air Base in Shreveport, Louisiana, to assist the Free French Air Force that trained there. Yago was embraced by the Jewish community of Shreveport and was married to one of the community’s most beloved and charming daughters, Sylvia Zelinsky, on December 3, 1944. Over the next five decades, he successfully built his valve and fittings business as well as his civic and family life until his retirement to Scottsdale, Arizona. The most important thing to Yago was his family, in the widest definition of the term. His had no known hobbies (other than a great love of classical and jazz music), but invested time in shepherding and following the interests of his immediate and extended family in their varied business, academic, medical careers and interests. He is survived by his wife Sylvia, who resides with their son Glenn and grandchildren Noah, Gideon, and Dena Yago in Pacific Palisades; his daughter, Helene Kumin (husband Elisha) of Austin, Texas; and grandchildren Holley Aune and Deborah Kumin. He is also survived by an extended family of close nieces and nephews of what he referred to as the ZYKS clan (Zelinsky, Yago, Kumin-Kottle, Scherer-Scharff-Simmons families). In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Chabad Jewish Community Center, 15207 Sunset Blvd., #A, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272.