Ira Levy
Ira Levy was born in 1939 in Brooklyn, the son of Emanuel and Ruth Levy. He died peacefully at home in Santa Barbara in the spring of 2025 after a long illness, surrounded by family.
Ira’s sister Arlene was born in 1940. They had a close relationship all their lives.
At the age of 14 Ira moved with his family from Brooklyn to Kansas City, Missouri, where his father had taken on the job of setting up a new factory for his New York employer.
As a young person, he developed a fascination for American and British history, which became a lifelong passion, and which he studied extensively. He was a great admirer of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Churchill, and John F. Kennedy. He acquired a large collection of British military uniforms, weapons, and paintings about which he became extremely knowledgeable.
After graduation from high school he spent two years at Kansas City Junior College before transferring to Washington University in St. Louis, where he completed a B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering. After a year at Tulane he returned to Washington University and completed an MBA in 1962. He was commissioned into the US Army from 1963-1965. Inspired by Kennedy, he joined the State Department in 1965, where he had a successful career in the Foreign Service, serving tours in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Germany (twice), as well as a secondment to the Pentagon and time in the Office for Combatting Terrorism, where he worked on counterterrorism. (While working at the State Department in D.C., he completed an M.A. in European History at American University in 1970.) After a final tour at the US Embassy in London as Head of the Non-Immigrant Visa Branch, he retired in 1988 and set up a successful US immigration consultancy in London, where he worked till he retired fully in 2000.
Ira’s first wife, Linda Dominik, accompanied him in his early years in the Foreign Service and they had two boys, David and Jonathan. He met his second wife, Lesley Sillitto, after moving to London in 1985 and they had two daughters, Rebecca and Heather. Lesley joined Ira in his immigration consultancy in 1990 and they worked together for ten years.
Ira and Lesley moved to Santa Barbara in 2007 from London. Ira loved Santa Barbara and was very happy to return to the US. He spent his time amidst good friends. He loved nothing more than discussing politics and engaging in long debates in person and online on national and foreign affairs with his companions in Santa Barbara and the many other friends he had acquired over the years and with whom he religiously kept in touch. He was a very loyal friend, a quiet and thoughtful man.
No description of Ira would be complete without reference to his three much loved German Shepherds, Irazu, Rocco and Wolfie, who adored him in equal measure.
In 2021, Ira was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. However, under the outstanding care of the Santa Barbara medical staff at UCLA and Cottage Hospital, he continued to live a good life for a further three years for which he was very grateful. During this period of advancing tiredness, he continued to devour audiobooks on the American Revolution, the Civil War, and World Wars l and II.
Ira is survived by his two wives, Lesley and Linda, his four children David, Jonathan, Rebecca and Heather and granddaughter Zoë, and his sister’s family in Camarillo. He was laid to rest at a Jewish ceremony at Santa Barbara Cemetery. He is greatly missed.
