Leland

My dear friend Leland Levy will be buried on Friday in California.  It’s hard to be so far away when there are losses.  Leland has a long and rich biography and a wide circle of friends and family who can speak about his life, a life well lived.  I met Le through my late husband Joe in the early 90’s.  Joe and Le had been close friends for decades before I met them.  They had one of those friendships that brought out the best in both of them.  I have a whole room full of memories of the time Joe and I spent with Le and Judy – not least, the image of Joe and Le dozing peacefully while Judy and I listened to a San Francisco Symphony concert together at Flint Center.

Anyone who knew Le knew that he was a remarkable collector of chess sets from around the world.  I don’t remember the story of how he began collecting, but by the time I knew him he had far too many sets to display them all.  Going to his house was like a trip to a chess set museum, a fraction of  the sets beautifully displayed in lighted glass cabinets.  I never actually saw him play chess, but that wasn’t the point.  The sets were beautiful and fascinating, representing so many cultures and styles.  A great traveler, he had loved hunting for them.

A couple of years after Joe died I was tutoring in a wonderful reading program for seventh and eighth grade students in East Palo Alto.  We were reading a book in which a chess game played a prominent role.  I knew how valuable Le’s chess sets were, but I asked him if he’d be willing to bring a few of them to the school to let the students see them.  He agreed without hesitation, and he and Jay and I loaded some 20 sets into the car and set them up on desks in the classroom.  We had some little activity, a scavenger hunt of sorts, to get the students to go around the room and look at the sets carefully.  The students were enthralled.  Chess sets are such amazing, complete little worlds.  What I remember most about that day is how effortlessly Le connected with the students, so different from himself in age and background, and how enthusiastically he shared his knowledge with them.  I don’t know if any of them went on to be chess players, but it wouldn’t surprise me.  Le captured their imagination and opened a big world for them.

I’ll leave it to others to talk about Le’s contributions to the community, from his time as mayor of Palo Alto, to his service on various boards, to the amazing outdoor stage he and Judy contributed to the playground – a huge favorite with my grandsons.  Le was a deeply generous person, generous with time, talent and treasure.  And he was a great wit, writing clever songs for all manner of occasions. I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes communities strong, what keeps them healthy and ethical.  The heart of that strength is people of Leland’s caliber, people who give themselves to the shared work, whether it’s governing or bringing chess sets to kids who have never seen anything like them, people who help us laugh and help us grow.  Le built community. He left the world better than he found it.