Lawrence Lester Mintz was born in Boston, MA on December 6, 1928, son of Beatrice Goldberg and Morton Mintz. He went to the prestigious Boston Latin School, where he excelled in academics and was part of the football team. Given that there was little professional football being played during the war years, Larry developed his passion for watching Army-Navy Games, always rooting for the Army. His early West Point heroes were General Custer, Glenn Davis and Doc Blanchard. He entered West Point highly motivated and was part of the Debate Club and the Jewish Choir, among other activities.
Upon graduation Larry branched Anti-Aircraft Artillery and, after completing the basic Artillery course at Fort Bliss, TX and spending time in Juarez at bull fights and eating the famous steaks at Martino’s, reported to the 75th Anti-Aircraft Gun Battalion, serving from 1951 to 1952. His next assignment was to the 194th Field Artillery Battalion in Europe, where he served until 1954. After President Eisenhower targeted the Military-Industrial Complex, Larry resigned his first lieutenant’s commission and later accepted a commission as a captain in the Army Reserves while starting a short-lived career in life insurance.
In 1956, he was with the InterAmerican Geodetic Survey in the Panama Canal Zone, where he married Lia Perczek of Cali, Colombia. In 1957 Larry was appointed as an agricultural advisor in Cali. For over 50 years, Larry traveled several hours daily by jeep, in rough terrain, to manage several farms, comprising hundreds of acres. He cultivated sugarcane, corn and sorghum and also supervised plants that produced brown sugar loaves (trapiches). He was a founding member of the Colombian Sugar Cane Growers Association as well as a longtime board member of the Colombian Cereal Farmers Federation, which in 1981 awarded him the Medal of Merit.
His West Point education inspired him to always search for new technologies, making him an inspiration for his colleagues. He organized trips for the Colombian Sugarcane Growers to all the sugarcane producing countries of the world—from Brazil to South Africa and from Australia to China—inspiring the whole community to adopt new advances and improve their outcomes. He was also active at the International Research Center for Tropical Agriculture, where he shared ideas for new crop varieties with top scientists from all over the world and often planted the new hybrid seedlings that were being developed, from the sweetest corn to the most plague resistant sugarcane. He had an insatiable appetite for discovering the world and new cultures and kept his classmates entertained with the stories of how he evaded the challenges of Colombia, from guerillas and kidnappers to crop burning and droughts.
During his life in Cali, Larry went by Lawrence and was an honorary American citizen, always establishing close ties with the consulate (until it was abolished), to any U.S. citizen who moved to Cali, and to the American School (Colegio Bolivar), where he was a board member and to which he sent his children to learn American values. He tried to keep his ties to West Point in whatever way he could, always being an exemplary and proud American citizen (endearingly called “El Gringo” wherever he went) and listening to Army-Navy Games on a short-wave radio with terrible reception. When the Internet came to Colombia, Larry was one of the earliest adapters. He was thrilled to be able to keep in touch with his classmates at West Point, so he created and ran the “My Day” series for his class.
His classmate Rocky Millburn, Company D-1, wrote: “Your father’s great legacy to our class USMA ’51 was the creation of the ‘My Day’ system on the class net. Suggesting that each classmate post a short message to the class on his birthday, Larry’s system promotes bonding among classmates, and the system continues to this day with many of our 97 survivors posting annually. Larry was also our cheerleader in urging participation in the semi-annual fund drives of WP.org. He was a valued classmate and well liked by all.”
Upon his retirement, Larry became an avid reader and enjoyed reading every book on World War II and early battles of the United States. He also enjoyed the books of Clint Granger, his West Point classmate. He focused on swimming and taught dozens of people how to swim. He kept his West Point habit of being meticulously neat, developing a methodology for folding everything from t-shirts to socks, making the perfect bed (free of any creases), keeping his shoes perfectly lined up, and also keeping himself well-groomed—he stood up straight, chin in. At the age of 82, Larry went to West Point for his 60th reunion, with two new hip replacements and visible balance issues, and decided to go skydiving with his classmates, leaving a great story for the family lore.
Lawrence Mintz was predeceased by his son, Gary. He leaves his beloved wife of 63 years, Lia; his sister, Natalie (Marvin) Harris; his daughters, Elizabeth (Liz) and Arline; his granddaughters, Sarah Haime Beda (Clemente), Vivian Haime Bonder (Alan), and Laura Jessie Haime; and five great grandchildren: Jacqueline, Gabriela and Albert Beda and Daniel and Yael Bonder. In his final days, Larry was happy to hear that the 1,000th Jewish cadet had graduated West Point, and when asked what he wanted to do if his health improved, he unwaveringly said, “I want to go to West Point.”
— Liz Mintz, daughter