Man Remembered for Love of Adventure

Nothing could make Leon Praport surrender to a sedentary life--not old age, or fear, or terrible memories.

At 83, the Holocaust survivor from New Jersey was still on the move, hopscotching the globe with his wife, doing things he had never done before.

So when the couple encountered the unusual Angels Flight railway during a visit to downtown Los Angeles, of course they got on and rode. It was to be one more memory of a trip celebrating their 54th wedding anniversary.

“He was full of love for life,” said grandson Dan Praport, 23, of New York. “He and his wife love to travel and do different things. That’s probably why they tried that thing out.”

What began as another in a long line of adventures, ended in tragedy Thursday when two cable cars collided on the historic railway.

Leon Praport was seriously injured and died hours later at County-USC Medical Center. His 80-year-old wife, Lola, remained in guarded and stable condition at County-USC Medical Center Friday evening, according to Linda Felix, a hospital administrator.

The couple’s visit to Los Angeles had been significant because it combined two of their deepest loves: family and travel. Besides marking their anniversary, the trip was a chance to visit relatives.

Instead, their small close-knit family has been left to mourn his loss, and maintain a vigil watching the condition of Lola.

“Family is No. 1 with him,” said granddaughter, Karen Praport, 21, of New Jersey. “We were extremely close. . . . Every time we saw him, he was so excited.”

Leon Praport was proud of his family and proud of the Praport name. He was born in Poland to a large family. During World War II the family was imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, his grandson said. Leon Praport was the lone survivor.

Though other European immigrants of his generation Anglicized their names, Praport refused to do so, maintaining the rare nomenclature, as if holding on to those who were lost.

For many years after World War II, Praport, his wife and two sons lived in Israel, where he owned a business in the fish processing industry, relatives said. In the early 1980s, the couple moved to suburban Middlesex County in central New Jersey.

News of the accident was a tough blow for the residents of Society Hill, a planned community of 300 townhomes in New Jersey’s Old Bridge Township. The couple had lived in the community for about 18 years and owned other houses nearby that they rented out, friends said.

“Although they were an elderly retired couple, they were always very active,” said George Lerner, a neighbor and president of the Society Hill Homeowners Assn. “You’d always see see them walking around the community. They volunteered in the homeowners association to deliver fliers and newsletters.”

They fed the ducks and the squirrels, maintained the common areas and played bridge daily. At Congregation Beth Ohr, where the couple worshiped, Leon Praport read from the Torah once a month and would lead services if the rabbi was out of town, Dan Praport said.

Lola Praport is an avid painter. She often displayed her paintings at the library in Old Bridge and in the couple’s home.

“Every inch of the walls of their house in Old Bridge is full of her paintings,” Dan Praport said. “He was very supportive of her.”

The couple still drove, Lerner said, and seemed to take pride in being able to maintain active lives. Each year they traveled to such places as Prague, the Colorado Rockies, Israel and Hawaii.

After a recent snowstorm a neighbor cleared the front of his house, and then proceeded to clear Praport’s.

Leon Praport “came to the door and said, ‘What are you doing? I can do that myself, please,’ ” Lerner recalled. “They were really great, great people, very kind, very considerate . . . probably the best people you would want to have as landlords. These are two people who are really going to be greatly missed in our community.”

In a small family taught to cherish each other and live to the maximum, the loss is measured by the silence left behind.

“My grandfather was the king of feelers. We never had to say anything. He would just know what we were feeling,” Karen Praport said. “You were the only person on earth when you talked to him.”

The condition of the other hospitalized victim, a 34-year-old man who suffered head trauma when he was thrown out of the cable car, was not known, said a County-USC spokeswoman.

Five other passengers suffered minor injuries in Thursday’s accident and were released from area hospitals.

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Times staff writer Matea Gold also contributed to this story.