Richard Leyh

Richard Leyh

AGE: 82 • Spring Lake

Richard Leyh died in Spring Lake on Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2012 after a brief illness, surrounded by many of the vast number of family members who loved him enormously. He was 82. Despite a very successful career overseeing the automation of the New York Stock Exchange, he often said that he was delighted above all by his bride of 63 years, Patricia, his five daughters and two sons, his 19 grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter. Dick, as he was invariably called, was a Belmar native, and the tall and lanky co-captain of the 1948 basketball team at St. Rose High School that won the state division championship. It was at St. Rose that Dick, the quiet class salutatorian, fell in love with the exuberant class valedictorian, "Pat Ryan," of Asbury Park, whom he married in 1949. He was a devout member of St. Catharine's Church in Spring Lake for 57 years. For most of the last two decades, Pat and Dick also spent part of the year at their home in St. Augustine, Florida. He made his mark on Wall Street, managing the transformation of the New York Stock Exchange from a system that relied on pneumatic tubes and slips of paper, to one that could handle the once-unimaginable volumes of millions of trades a day. Dick was working at IBM when it won the contract to computerize the NYSE in the early 1960s, and he was charged with developing the system that reported stock prices. Later, he helped develop the first system to automate trades on the NYSE. He went on to become executive vice president and chief of operations for the Securities Industry Automation Corporation, the computer arm of the New York and American Stock Exchanges. He was foresighted enough to develop a trading system far advanced from what was thought to be needed at the time. And when trading volumes surged to three or four times normal during a market crash in October, 1987, other stock exchanges shut down, but the NYSE kept running, a feat the New York Times called "miraculous." He retired from SIAC in 1991.

Dick was predeceased by his parents, Louis and Grace; brother, Louis; sister, Marilyn and grandson, Brendan. He is survived by his wife, Patricia; his children and their spouses, Gail and Brian O'Reilly, Gloria and David Adler, Anne Leyh and Tony Pitale, Teresa and Don Hetzel, Eileen Geary and Richard Leyh Jr., Elizabeth and Richard D'Addario, and David Leyh; 18 of his grandchildren and one great-grandchild. He is also survived by his sister, Gloria and Harold Buckley and brother-in-law, George Banke and many loving nieces and nephews.

Viewing will be on Sunday, December 30th from 2-4 pm and 7-9 pm at O'Brien Funeral Home in Wall NJ. A funeral mass will be held on Monday December 31 at St. Catharine's Church in Spring Lake, NJ at 10:30 am. Entombment will follow in St. Catharine's Cemetery. Contributions in lieu of flowers may be sent to the Food Bank of Monmouth and Ocean Counties and St. Rose Sandy Relief. For more information or to send condolences please visit www.obrienfuneralhome.com.