My Father: Mansour Lavi Obituary

Mansour Lavi (born 1939 in Hamadan, Iran, died 2025 in New York City, USA) was an engineer and entrepreneur who powered a family business that provided after market turbine parts and repair to the aviation and power industry. The family manufacturing business was based in New York and peaked around 50 employees, serving domestic and international customers in the military, government, and private markets. It competed with global industrial Original Equipment Manufacturing giants: Westinghouse, General Electric, Mitsubishi, Rolls Royce, and more.

Mansour Lavi (1939-2025)

I’ve already written “A History and Perspective on My Dad,” but I’ll publish it later because I want to provide citations and reduce the personal drama. Here are the highlights:

• I am proud of my Dad’s origin story, a Persian Jew who was left Iran with his brothers and a suitcase, crossing the world in pursuit of education and religious/ethnic tolerance to achieve a better life in the United States. As an immigrant, he is an example of what makes America great!
• In some respects, Dad was a gear-head who loved the internal combustion engine: it motivated him to target the birthplace of the automobile in Michigan for college in the 60’s.
• In college, he met Mom (and introduced himself as “Mark” rather than his “foreign” name), fell in love. After graduating college with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan State University, he married her in Quebec and applied for U.S. citizenship. After 40+ years of marriage, Dad would go on to remarry twice.
• Dad and his brothers helped most of their family relocate from Iran in the late 60’s to Long Island, New York. After a short career, Dad joined the family business in 1972, when he moved Mom and me to Huntington, New York.
• My father’s side of the family was insular, loving, and difficult. My grandparents only spoke Farsi, but I loved the abundance of Persian food at the large, holiday gatherings (crunchy rice, yum!) at an Aunt or Uncle’s home.
• Dad was a fanatic for cleanliness and the most determined person I know (and my younger brother, Richard, has more of this trait than I ever will): he wouldn’t take no for an answer. If he did, he would always come back to revisit the topic (usually business or education), every month, year, etc.
• Dad prized education and self-determination, my parents funded my brother’s and my college education.
• Dad’s determination was also his weakness, because unless he sought advice, he wouldn’t take it.
• Dad was dedicated to his work, a workaholic to the end of his life. He often traveled across the US and the world, for multiple weeks.
• Dad spoke with a Persian accent in an effusive, poetic manner about a person’s good traits; it was extremely charming!
  • I’ve adopted one his mannerisms recently, probably as a tribute: “My dear friend, …”
• Dad would espouse about God in general terms and advocate for Jewish traditions, but he was not very observant.
• While I have more mixed things to say, I loved my Dad because he was good spirited and honest with everyone by default. Despite this, he had his secrets and flaws inherited from his family and business. The end of his life was mostly an avoidable mess.

I’ll end with the last words I told him: “We will do the best we can to honor your wishes. I love you Dad, this is good bye.”

2025-02-11: Long Island Funeral

After a short, closed casket ceremony, we buried Dad alongside his brother, sister, and parents at https://wellwoodbethmoses.com

Postscript

My last words to you: too many Americans avoid planning for death, probably because of fear and hard discussions to arrive at documented decisions. Outside of my family, I have seen a lot of preventable ugliness when an elder passes. Reading Tuesdays with Morrie was one the few positive, beautiful examples of death in America and I’m thankful to my college English professor for putting it in our curriculum.

This is the minimum of what you must do, the basics can be done in a weekend to get your legal documents in order:

1. Power of Attorney: divided by Health and Legal responsibilities if necessary.
2. Health Directive (also called a living will or medical directions)
3. Will with an executor and an executor succession plan: what to do with assets (and whom it is bequeathed), burial wishes, appendix with list of accounts and credentials.

Complete the above as soon as possible, retain a lawyer and use NoLo for initial guidance (in many public libraries), and distribute copies to all parties concerned. Then you can finish the next round of responsibilities:

• Insure the beneficiaries and/or co-signers on all of your accounts are up to date, especially: bank, investment, health, and insurance.
• Document and distribute your digital account credentials: use a password vault.
• Move your primary asset(s) into an estate and update the will.