Name and History

    Jonathan Noah LevyJonathan Noah Levy, 20, an engineering student at the University of Maryland and valedictorian of the class of 1989 at Kennedy High School, died of leukemia on January 14 at his home in Silver Spring. (Read more about the rededication of the media center.)

    An honors and "gifted and talented" student since the third grade, he ran his own computer consulting business and had worked summers as an intern for the Goddard Space Flight Center and the Naval Surface Warfare Center.

    He played flute and piano and was a band member at Kennedy, where he also was an editor on the school newspaper and belonged to the National Honor Society and Classical League. He was valedictorian despite having missed 75 percent of his classes during four years of treatment for leukemia.

    He had been a MENSA member since the age of 8. As a high school student, he was named a National Merit Scholarship Finalist and a Maryland Distinguished Scholar. The University of Maryland awarded him a full scholarship.

    Mr. Levy was among 300 top scorers on the Scholastic Aptitude Test in the country selected by the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth from seventh-graders who took that test six years in advance. The center, which places young students in summer programs at colleges across the country, sent Mr. Levy to study physics, psychology and writing at Franklin and Marshall College, St. Mary's College and Washington College.

    As an intern for the space flight center's extraterrestrial physics lab, he helped to design propulsion and life-support systems for a theoretical trip by astronauts to Mars. He also worked on developing models of how the solar system was formed.

    For two summers he worked at the naval center as a computer resource expert, trouble-shooting and helping others set up computer systems.

    He was a volunteer at Wheaton Library, helping with computer systems, and he helped teach classes at Chaim Weizman Yiddish-Hebrew School in Silver Spring.

    Many of his fellow students learned about the severity of Mr. Levy's illness when he mentioned it during his valedictory speech at graduation. He spoke of the importance of setting goals, and how that had helped him to live a full life. At that time, in 1989, his leukemia was in remission. He died 10 days after his 20th birthday.

    He is survived by his parents, Arthur and Margarete Diener Levy of Silver Spring; a grandfather, Towia Diener of Silver Spring; and a grandmother, Anne Levy of Brooklyn, N.Y. - Copyright The Washington Post Company Jan 16, 1991.

    Source: 1989 Kennedy Valedictorian Jonathan N. Levy, 20, Dies; [FINAL Edition] Claudia Levy. The Washington Post (pre-1997 Fulltext). Washington, D.C.: Jan 16, 1991. p. b.06