Robert P. Levy (C’52), Emeritus Trustee and a decorated Philadelphia sportsman who spent decades mentoring young people at Penn and beyond through athletics, died on November 7. He was 87.

Mr. Levy was born in Philadelphia (his father, Leon (D’15, HON’73), was a devoted Penn alum), and he went to William Penn Charter School before attending Penn and obtaining a degree in sociology. A tennis standout, he was later inducted into Penn’s Tennis and Athletics Halls of Fame. The year after he graduated, he founded the Little Quakers, an all-star youth football team for boys in the Philadelphia region that still exists today and plays at least one game each season at Franklin Field. He served in the US Army Reserve Medical Corps during the Korean War.

Mr. Levy was chair of DRT Industries, a Philadelphia-based conglomerate with industrial holdings in the Delaware Valley. He first became involved in horse racing in the 1940s with his parents. He went on to become extensively involved in Thoroughbred racing, operating the Robert P. Levy Stable and serving as chair of the Atlantic City Racing Association, a director and past president of the Thoroughbred Racing Association of North America and a member of the Board of Directors of Penn National Gaming Inc.

Mr. Levy joined University of Pennsylvania’s Board of Trustees in 1971 and became a member of the Student Life Committee. He also brought great insight to his role on the Board of Overseers of the School of Veterinary Medicine, where he helped advance sports medicine for racehorses such as his own 1987 Belmont Stakes-winner, Bet Twice. He was also a longtime member of the Athletics Overseer Board and volunteered as an assistant coach for the women’s tennis team. He also served as chair of the Board of Overseers for the School of Dental Medicine. In 2003, Mr. Levy received the Alumni Award of Merit.

Mr. Levy and his family made possible the Robert P. Levy Tennis Pavilion, the Dental School’s Levy Research Building (now the Levy Center for Oral Health Research), the Paley Professorship for the Dean of the School of Design, and Blanche P. Levy Park in the center of campus.

Mr. Levy was a committed Philadelphian, serving on the City’s Fairmount Park Commission and the Philadelphia Art Commission. As chair of the Philadelphia Sports Congress, he brought many high-profile sporting events to the city; the Philadelphia Sports Congress created the Robert P. Levy Community Service Award in his honor.

On the national level, Mr. Levy was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, served on the President’s Commission on Olympic Sports and chaired the US tennis teams at the World Maccabiah Games in the 1970s and 1980s. Memorialized in the halls of fame of Pennsylvania Sports, the Police Athletic League, Philadelphia Sports and Philadelphia Jewish Sports, he was a former Philadelphia Police Athletic League’s Man of the Year and the recipient of awards from the John B. Kelly Foundation, the National Football Foundation, the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame, the Montgomery County (Pennsylvania) Coaches Hall of Fame and the Pop Warner Little Scholars for his remarkable service to youth sports.

He is survived by his wife, Rochelle “Cissie” Feldman, former Overseer of the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies; children, Kathryn (GGS’09), Wendy, Robert, Angela (C’87) and Michael (C’90); and grandchildren, Alexander (C’05, GAR’08, GFA’08), Peter (C’07), Caroline, Emma, William, Andrew, Henry, Lily, Ryder (C’13), Tyler, Sam, Evan and Grayson.