Kenneth G. Lynch; Lumber Company Owner

Kenneth G. Lynch, a retired lumber company owner and founding member of the San Fernando Valley Commercial and Savings Bank, has died at his Canyon Country home. He was 89.

Lynch served as treasurer on the bank’s board of directors from 1953 to 1960. The institution was later sold to TransWorld Bank.

He died Tuesday of natural causes, said his son, Kevin Lynch.

Born March 9, 1901, in Los Angeles, he graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1919. He became a partner in the George Whitney Lumber Co. during the early 1920s, before going to work for the Blinn Lumber Co., where his father, Charles, was general manager. He managed the planing mill and later became the head salesman when the company merged with another to become the Patten-Blinn Lumber Co.

Lynch married Ysabel Bowen in 1924, who died in 1939. He married Anne Knoblock in 1944 and later that year opened the Lynch Lumber Co. in Burbank. The company was moved to Pacoima where it was destroyed by arson in 1955. He moved the business to Canyon Country the following year and continued to operate it until his retirement in 1968.

He helped organize a Kiwanis Club in Pacoima in 1947 and the now-defunct Tri-Canyon Kiwanis Club in Canyon Country in 1960. He served as president of the Mint Canyon Chamber of Commerce, now the Canyon Country Chamber of Commerce, in 1962 and 1963 and was on the board of directors of the Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital from 1975 to 1984.

He is survived by his wife, Anne; a son, Kevin of Canyon Country; a daughter, Brenda Lynch of Seattle; seven grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. Visitation is scheduled for 5 to 9 p.m. today at the Eternal Valley Chapel, 23287 N. Sierra Hwy., which is handling the arrangements. A funeral is planned for noon Saturday at the Eternal Valley Chapel.