Richard Daskais passed away on October 9, 2020 in Los Angeles, after a brief illness. Dick, or, as he was affectionately known to family and friends, Dicky Dacky, was born on November 17, 1929 in Chicago to Morris H. (“Duke”) Daskais, a research chemist, and Sara (“Sadie”) Kline Daskais, a social worker. 

Dick’s family moved several times in his early years during the Depression, living in New York and Baltimore before returning and settling in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. Dick attended Ray School and Hyde Park High where he made many lifelong friends.

Dick’s tales of growing up in Hyde Park with his friends, Bob Solomon, Jimmy Kaplan (who would later marry Dick’s sister, Susy) and their crew included summer days spent at Promontory Point on Lake Michigan, swimming and playing poker, the latter leading to Dick’s only brush with the law in his 90 years. A 17-year-old Dick and two friends were nabbed by plainclothes Chicago police detectives for gambling, with the officers snatching the $2.10 that was in the pot at the time of the bust. When facing a judge the following week, Dick and his co-conspirators agreed to donate the $2.10 to a local charity in lieu of time in the slammer. 

He continued to gamble into adulthood, but never again attracted the attention of authorities.  He kept a careful tally of his net gambling winnings at the racetrack, billiards and in regular poker games.

He was an avid sports fan and a good athlete, swimming and playing tennis and other sports. He spent many a summer Sunday morning and fall afternoon on the Midway Plaisance, playing softball and outsprinting defenders and catching long bombs in touch football games. 

Dick was a precocious child who excelled in school. He enrolled at the University of Chicago on a scholarship when he was 16. At the U of C he met others, notably Alan Press and Bob Franklin, who would remain close friends for the rest of their lives, as well as being worthy poker and backgammon opponents.

Dick graduated in four years with degrees in philosophy and mathematics and opted to attend DePaul Law School. He quickly decided that law wasn’t for him, and, after talking with a friend of his mother’s, he took and passed the first two (of seven at the time) actuarial exams. Dick’s life direction was set.

It was while working as an actuary for an insurance company in San Francisco that he met his first wife, Mary Coates. Dick and Mary had daughter Carol in Alameda in 1955 before returning to Chicago and Hyde Park where Jeanie (1957) and Donny (1959) quickly followed. The family moved to Evanston in 1968 where Dick made many more good friends. Dick and Mary divorced in 1974. Dick married Georgiana (Georgie) Homer Holt in 1975. Georgie’s three kids from her previous marriage to Nick Holt, Daniel, Helen and Stan, bonded with Dick and the combined family became one.

Dick and partner Charlie Walls opened their own actuarial consulting firm, Daskais and Walls, in 1966, and enjoyed a run of nearly twenty years. Dick also played a prominent role in the actuarial profession during a defining time in the world of private pensions, with the passing of the major pension law ERISA in the middle of his career. They sold the business to a British actuarial firm, Noble Lowndes, in 1984. Dick and Georgie then moved to Los Angeles in 1985 where Dick worked briefly for an actuarial consulting firm before joining Goldman Sachs later that year. He remained with Goldman until 1989, and continued consulting with them until the early 1990s.

Throughout his career, Dick enjoyed the camaraderie of both his colleagues and his clients and, sometimes to their surprise, of adversaries in pension and other negotiations. Union or management, conservative or progressive, rich or poor, black or white, woman or man, he conducted himself with integrity, friendliness and respect to all.

After moving to Los Angeles (and in 1993 to Ventura), Dick and Georgie were able to enjoy time with Georgie’s children, Daniel, Helen and Stan, and Stan’s family, all of whom lived in Los Angeles for extended periods over the years. Georgie passed away on February 7, 2014.

All six of his kids remained close to him.  In recent years, Stan and his wife Jacqueline and their three children, who live near Dick in LA, were wonderful companions and caregivers to Dick.

Dick loved a good joke and had a marvelous sense of humor. He was quick-witted, clever and oh so sharp. He was also a generous, loving father and grandfather who offered support without judgement. He was practical, rational, ethical and always forthright. His counsel was wise, his opinions measured and based on fact. He was an actuary to the core of his being.

He loved tennis, the beaches of Lake Michigan and the Pacific Ocean, the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Bears, and his old stomping grounds in Hyde Park which he would always revisit on return trips to Chicago, often accompanied by son Donny.

The family’s obsession with geography was a genetic trait from Dick’s DNA. Many an evening was spent poring over atlases, each family member with her or his own atlas, naming capitols, quizzing one another on countries which had changed names, and discussing the history of nations.

Dicky Dacky was well-loved and he deserved every bit of that love. We miss him already.

Dick was preceded in death by his mother and father, Sadie and Duke Daskais, his wife Georgiana, his sister Susy Kaplan and his niece Sara Kaplan. He is survived by his three children, Carol Daskais Navin (Pat) of Evanston, Illinois, Jeanie Daskais of Forestville, California and Donny Daskais of Evanston, three stepchildren, Daniel Holt and Helen Holt of Townshend, Vermont, and Stanley Holt (Jacqueline Bendy) of Los Angeles, his grandniece Kianna Ervin (Dominic McIver), and eight grandchildren, Sara and Anna Navin, Lila and Ben Kahn, Lili Daskais and Emma, Sadie and Owen Holt.

A memorial service will be held, but details have yet to be determined.  Contributions in Dick’s memory may be made to Mikva Challenge. And be sure and vote Trump out! Dick would like that.