Daniel A. Levy Memorial Scholarship

Scholarship Type: Endowed
Established Date: February 8th, 2007

Daniel Anthony Levy was born in Chicago, Illinois, and escaped to New Mexico twenty years later. At WNMU he literally made lifelong friends, five young men still having fun together 40 years later. From New Mexico, Dan continued west to California, where he resided until his death in 2006. In that year, at age 63, diagnosed with what his doctor called “the rarest and worst of leukemias,” Dan took the unhappy news with characteristic grace by composing his own obituary and drawing a funny face where his photo would go. He wrote that he had passed away after a brief illness, that “JoAnn, his bride of 31 years was at his side,” and that he would be remembered "by his many friends and associates for his love of life and his gentleness,” adding that “his wit and sense of humor had a way of putting everyone around him at ease.”

Dan believed that what was important about his life was who he was, a kind and caring person, not what he had done for a living, although in his 38 years as a special education teacher, first in Los Angeles and then for the California Youth Authority, he had touched many lives. What was important to him was that he had loved life, loved to laugh, and the best thing in the world was having fun, anywhere he could find it or make it, whether socializing over a poker game or gazing at what he called the “lovely paraphernalia that is nature." In his final days he fondly recalled foreign travels as well as annual trips to Las Vegas or New Mexico where he’d reunited with his college “chums” until they all became “geezers."

In 2007, Peter Levy established the Daniel A. Levy Memorial Scholarship to honor his brother’s lifelong fondness for New Mexico.