Mark Troy

Mark B. Troy died unexpectedly on Saturday, September 5, 2020, at the age of 77. He suffered a ruptured aneurysm the previous day, resulting in intracranial hemorrhage and coma, then passed away in the early morning.

He is survived by his wife of 33 years, Elaine Kirsh; their daughter, Jeanne Troy Stockwell (Nick); his son, Andrew Troy (Yessenia), and two grandchildren.

Mark was born on November 10, 1942 to Leon and Julia Mayers Troy, in Wilkes-Barre, PA. He graduated from Meyers High School in 1960, where he participated in several sports and was a member of the National Honor Society. His family was well-known locally for owning a furniture store, and as active members of the Wilkes-Barre Jewish Community Center.

In 1964, Mark graduated from Wilkes College (now Wilkes University) with a degree in industrial engineering and math. He moved to New York City and began his 36 year career with JP Morgan Chase and its predecessors. He made monthly trips home to participate in the Air Force Reserves from 1964-68, He received an MBA in Finance from Long Island University in 1971,

Mark retired in 2001 as a Vice President in Financial Planning and Control at JP Morgan Chase, having earned a reputation as an outstanding cost accountant, financial analyst, and manager. He then brought that same skillset and extensive experience to Search and Care, a not-for-profit dedicated to independent living assistance for seniors in the Upper East Side and East Harlem. During his 13 years in this role, Mark designed a financial management program (Money Matters) to help elderly clients understand and oversee their own finances with the help of retired professionals.

Mark thrived with an active and healthy lifestyle until his untimely death, with weekends spent in the Packanack Lake community of Wayne, NJ. He especially enjoyed skiing, hiking, swimming, and tennis, as well as long walks and playing with the family dog (Sweetie, and then Zephyr). He took every possible opportunity to travel, including many summers spent in Vermont and Maine, family vacations to Paris, Costa Rica, and Alaska, and regular visits to his daughter in Washington state. In the last few years, he and his wife made world travel a priority, with extraordinary trips to Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Peru, Australia and New Zealand.

He will be missed by the many people who were in his life. They will continue to be in his wife’s. His wife, Elaine, said, “Mark was my best friend. It hurts to lose your best friend but he will remain in my thoughts forever.”

Our exceptionally talented daughter, Jeanne, wrote the following eulogy to her father:

Almost eight years since I left New York, I miss nothing as acutely as the storms. Watercolor sunsets over Jersey, pastel orange and pink suddenly obscured by ominous dark clouds. Rain doesn’t come gradually; no individual droplets, only a relentless cascade. Unhindered by buildings, heedless of traffic, they swallow the city like some harbinger of Lovecraftian myth - fracture the impenetrable sky with exultant lightning, shake the deepest subway lines with thunder, and then move on.

Storms of that magnitude are rare in the Pacific Northwest. The rain here hardly qualifies as more than drizzle; thunder is distant and fleeting, if it manifests at all.

Those summer squalls are more than a cornerstone of my childhood. Formidable and formative in memory, they persist in my absence. They are timeless - individually, each one blows through fierce and fast, disperses within a few hours. Collectively, as a natural element, they continue. Perpetual, inevitable.

Yet we made them our own. Willingly soaked, grinning haphazardly, I was insatiably drawn to each new and dizzying spectacle over the Hudson, and my dad was always at my side.

I never considered that those storms - our storms - would cease to exist. It was simply inconceivable.

I never doubted that he would be there. Always sharing in calculated risk, judging it to be ever-so-slightly outweighed by a mutual sense of adventure. Booking it down double black diamond slopes in Vermont, before I knew how to be afraid. A treacherous zig-zag ascent in a rented Jeep, rising hundreds of feet above vast Utah desert. Snorkeling rough waters in Costa Rica, undeterred by losing his goggles when I jumped in. I never met a rollercoaster too big, and even when I (finally, barely) edged past the height requirement, he didn’t hesitate to join me. He embraced every challenge, savored every new experience, and instilled in me the same - but his own involvement was understated. He possessed a kind of unassuming charisma that doesn’t seek the spotlight, and instead reflects it onto those nearby.

My dad was never beyond reach, never out of sight or earshot - and even when shared adventures became solitary, autonomous, it was for him that I memorized seemingly inane moments. When the default of our stories became my stories, I still brought them home to him.

I don’t know how to do this.

I can construct palaces out of paragraphs, but I don’t know how to translate my incoherent brain-noise into something that resembles closure. I don’t know how to embrace this challenge, let alone articulate it. Past tense does not compute; my internal clock is paused, in limbo, somewhere in the days and weeks before his very essence was suddenly extinguished.

Intellectually, logically, I understand - this vertigo will pass. Eventually I’ll learn to make sense of the world without him in it. I’ll turn to another confidante; my stories will be redirected. But I’m not there yet, and I don’t want to be.

Through emotional freefall, this is the question I shout into the void: Did he know?

He knew I loved him, despite weeks and months of distraction. Three thousand miles apart, finding my way, living on my own terms - I loved him like no other, but we said that readily enough.

What I never said was: You made me.

Not with any particular artistic touch; some early phases of the work in progress were, to put it gently, a cluster*$@#. Nonetheless, it was his influence that gave definition to the messy, awkward hodgepodge. His understated conviction countered every misstep, nudged me back on course. Though he worked best with numbers, he ignited my lifelong passion for words virtually overnight.

So many of my quirks and nuances come from him. Northeastern turns of phrase. Inescapably Jewish tastes, made eclectic through a touch of wanderlust. Pragmatic conversations, iconic movie references. Insatiable hunger for knowledge. A secret love of dad-jokes and bad puns.

It was no real surprise when I eventually fell in love with a man who embodies many of my dad’s same fundamental traits - soft-spoken; slow to anger; goofy humor; affectionate; insightful; humble; quiet confidence; endlessly curious.

But these are just words. Descriptors; adjectives and verbs. Various arrangements of twenty-six letters, more or less contained within the structure of punctuation. They cannot possibly convey who he was (past tense), or who he is to me (present tense, now and always). At best, they illustrate the rain with some measure of accuracy, but losing him - that’s the thunder and lightning. A Nor’easter raging through.

My grief is not verbose. It is unintelligible, unrecognizable, unfathomable. It is halfway-hyperventilating, a waterlogged paroxysm. Relentless and cataclysmic and upside-down. It is the momentary gurgle of misplaced laughter, a sliver of morbid humor, the absurdity of a two-hour breakdown set off by swiss cheese.

It is almost, almost reason to believe in ‘something greater’. Maybe this is all some sort of cosmic jest, at my unapologetically atheist expense?

Bad joke. In his honor, here’s one more:

Mark - you left your mark.

If you wish to make a donation in Mark’s name, consider

Search and Care, Inc:  Seeks out older people on the Upper Eastside and in East Harlem communities who need help in managing life’s daily activities or accessing essential services, and to provide them the support and companionship they require to live with security and dignity in the manner they choose. Mark designed and led their home-based financial management program, called Money Matters. A not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization. You can make donations online at www.searchandcare.org or by mail at Search and Care, 1844 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10128, 212-289-5300.

Union of Concerned Scientists: Uses rigorous, independent science to solve our planet’s most pressing problems and improve people’s lives.  A not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization. You can donate online at www.ucusa.org or Union of Concerned Scientists, 12 Brattle Square, Cambridge, MA 0213

Wildlife Conservation Society: Works to save wildlife and wild places in nearly 60 countries around the world. They also run 4 wildlife parks and 1 aquarium in NYC. Mark and his family were frequent visitors to the wildlife parks. A not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization. You can make donations on line at www.wcs.org or by mail at WCS Donations, 2300 Southern Blvd, Bronx, NY 10460.