Seymour Radow, 91

Longtime Atlantic Beach community activist Seymour Radow died on Feb. 22. He was 91.
A Bronx native, Radow was a World War II combat veteran, who moved to Atlantic Beach in 1959. An industrial art and special education teacher, Radow, served the village as a trustee and deputy mayor in the mid 1980s.
He served in the army’s mechanized cavalry in Europe from 1942 to 1945. Radow was part of the unit that helped to liberate the Dachau concentration camp.
After the war, he went into teaching and taught at Morris High School in the Bronx, Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn and Beach Channel High School in Rockaway throughout a career that ended in the late 1980s, according to his family.
Radow and his wife, Ruth, were married in 1958. After moving to Atlantic Beach, they were part of the movement spearheaded by the then Atlantic Beach Property Owners Association to establish the community as a village. A battle the Radows supported financially. Atlantic Beach became a village in 1962.

Continued civic involvement led to serving on the village board and being involved in the fight to prevent the oceanfront from being overrun by hotels and condominiums as Radow assisted in creating the marine restriction district to preserve the beaches, which prohibits development of the beach club properties for housing.
“If not for the Radows’ lifelong efforts, leadership and strong support from residents, the entire Atlantic Beach oceanfront would have been buildings up to ten stories high,” said brother-in-law Morris Kramer, an Atlantic Beach resident and environmentalist.
A gruff, but caring and sensitive man, according to Kramer, who assisted seniors, especially widows, often driving them to doctor appointments and performing minor home repairs.
Radow is survived by Ruth, daughter Marion and son Tom, both lawyers in Colorado, son Raymond, an attorney and Atlantic Beach resident, and grandchildren Ariel and Marisa.
“He will be sorely missed by his family and friends, those he was always happy to give a helping hand to, and the many neighbors whose interests he worked vigilantly to protect,” Kramer said.