"Mark consistently supported the growth of our technology industry"

My name is William Lyte. Mark and I were friends for many years. I knew him from the early 1980s, when he was a young aerospace engineer, and I was promoting a JPL-related organization, the Southern California Space Business Roundtable. Mark stepped in to help, and ultimately ended up as president of the organization. Later, we put together a telecommunications working group, to help foster high technology in Pasadena. That was about 1990 or so. We met at Tim Brick’s office. As our technology program expanded, Mark became a mainstay of our working group. Ultimately, he became a member of our Los Angeles County Business Technology Center, which I chaired. During that time, (1998), we began discussing the potential for Pasadena to become the center for counter-terrorism technology. This was long before September 11th. In fact we planned a conference around it, but we were before our time, as is often the case.

Mark consistently supported the growth of our technology industry, which has now become very substantial. But what I remember most about him was that he was always so cheerful. I cannot recall a time when he was ever anything but good natured, with a quiet brilliance and solid perserverence. In a world where people are dedicated to the most fleeting of ideas, Mark Leon was a constant force, ever advancing the idea that we could do better with consistent hard work. He was also deeply an American. I recall he had a tape which he carried around with him demonstrating how we as Americans had given away many of our best ideas (like the flat panel display screen) through lack of vision and creativity. I still use his comments as an example in my discussions.

We have lost a very exceptional individual. As a closing remark, many people who have worked in or around the Disney organization still say, when confronted with a problem, say, “How would Walt have done it?” I think we can say, in the same vein, when, “How would Mark Leon have done it?, and be comfortable that we would be steering ourselves in the proper direction.

Please let me know if I can help in any way.

Sincerely,

Bill Lyte
(213) 219-4120