New Orleans Times-Picayune, Mon 15 Apr 1974, p.1:
BRIDGE PIONEER CAPT. LEVY DIES
One of the City's Most Active Civic Leaders
Capt. Neville Levy (USN Ret.), who headed the crusade to build the greater New Orleans Mississippi River Bridge, died Saturday afternoon after a lengthy illness.
Capt. Levy, 81, died at 3:45 p.m. at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital.
Funeral services will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday at Temple Sinai, at St. Charles Avenue and Calhoun Street, with Rabbis Murray Blackman and Julian B. Feibelman officiating. Interment will be in Metairie Cemetery.
Capt. Levy was one of the New Orleans' most active en in civic affairs. He was one of the founders of International House and one of the first citizens to work for the creation of Alvin Callender Naval Air Station.
He was active throughout his life in more than 90 local, state, regional and national organizations. He served as president, chairman or board member of more than 50 of those organizations. He held more than 21 honorary memberships, directorships and degrees, including a doctor of law degree form Loyola.
But he was best known for his efforts to bring about construction of the Mississippi River Bridge. Even after the bridge was completed, he would work unsuccessfully, to see a second bridge constructed at Napoleon Avenue.
His dedication to the bridge project, in addition to his other civic activities, earned him the Times-Picayune Loving Cup committee with these words:
"The jobs of financing watch-dogging, wrinkle-ironing involved (in the bridge project), all performed immodesty and in constant deference to public sentiment and participation, have to be experienced: They can't be imagined. Capt. Levy will have to go some here after to 'top his bridge.'"
Capt. Levy served as chairman of the Mississippi Rive Bridge Authority for many years and was still a member at the time of his death.
His work on the bridge authority was not without critics. His appeal for construction of another bridge at Napoleon Avenue met with considerable opposition and was finally defeated.
The New Orleans Public Library was another one of Capt. Levy's civic "children," as he served as president of the library board for several years and was still a board member t the time of his death. He donated the auditorium in the central library on Loyola Avenue in honor of his late wife, Helen Adler Levy.
He was also former president, and current member of the Audubon Park Commission.
A native of New Orleans, Capt. Levy was educated here and graduated from Tulane University, majoring in mechanical engineering.
He entered the U.S. Navy during World War One, joining the Naval Reserve in 1921, retiring in 1941.
Serving in the Navy aboard submarines led to the Neville Levy Award, presented annually to an outstanding submarine reservist attached to the New Orleans-based navy reserve submarine division.
Among the many other organizations Capt. Levy was active in were the Salvation Army, Chamber of Commerce of the New Orleans Area, Masons (he was a KCCH 32nd degree Mason), U.S. navy League, New Orleans Citizens Committee of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, Foreign Relations Association of New Orleans, Latin American Institute for Foreign Trade, International Trade Mart, the Propeller Club, New Orleans Board of Trade, U.S. Public Health Hospital; and a multitude of other organizations.
In 1921, he founded the Equitable Equipment Company, a boat building and marine supply company and with plants in new Orleans and Madisonville. He remained active in the company as a consultant after it was sold a few years ago.
He was honored in 1963 with a life membership in the New Orleans Fraternal Order of Police and last year as American Patriot of the Year by the New Orleans Chapter of the Military Order of the World Wars.
Survivors include one son, David P. Levy of Slidell; two daughters, Mrs. John Ormond of New Orleans and Mrs. Herman J. Obermayer, Arlington, Va.; one sister, Mrs. Max Neumaier of New Orleans, and 11 grandchildren.
Tharp-Sontheimer Funeral Home, 4127 S. Claiborne Ave., is in charge of arrangements.
[photo included with article]
1892 - 1974