Lawrence Albert Kreig, 61, an Accountant and CPA living in Framingham, MA, died peacefully at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston the evening of Feb. 26, 2015 following an eight month courageous and dignified battle due to complications from melanoma. After an initial diagnoses and treatment for Skin Melanoma in late 2012, the cancer resurfaced as a malignant brain tumor in June 2014.
A devoted father and husband, he found great comfort in receiving care in the same hospital where his beloved twins, Andrew Raymond Kreig and Catherine Eva Kreig, were born in 2005, and where his wife, Vivian Markoulakis Kreig, lovingly helped attend to his care.
He was regarded by friends and family as an adventurous spirit who joyfully traveled the world widely in his younger years and found great happiness later in his family life and career. His many hobbies and lifelong passions included: reading books, particularly those of military history of the Civil War and World War I and II; studying physics and math; playing the guitar; and having conversations about world events, economics, and politics. Larry, as he was known to his friends, loved languages. He had a great command of the English language; spoke French fluently; and knew some Russian. He was an avid collector of books and slide rulers.
He was born in 1953 in Chicago to the late Albert and Margaret Kreig. The family moved to New York City when he was three years old. He attended Collegiate School from grades two to 12 with the exception of the fifth grade. That year, he lived on his grandmother’s farm in rural Clinton, Arkansas because his late mother, Margaret Kreig, was engaged in dangerous research about the underworld that would result in her 1967 book, Black Market Medicine, and testimony before congress on her findings
He received a B.A. from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Government in political science. After graduation he went to Alaska to be with his brother Ray, who had moved there. He worked on the Alaskan Pipeline, in an Alaskan gold mine and as a teamster driving large trucks during the pipeline boom of the early 1970s. In 1975, he moved to France and obtained a master’s degree in economics from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques at the University of Grenoble.
Afterwards, he moved to Texas, where he started as a debt collector, became a sales assistant at a Lehman Brothers brokerage branch, and obtained an MBA from the University of Houston. A patriot and student of history, he joined the Army National Guard. He attended Airborne School in 1986 at Fort Benning, Georgia and undertook multiple parachute jumps, among other duties that included service later in the Massachusetts National Guard. He was promoted to Sergeant E-5 in 1988.
Beginning in 1983 he embarked a 31 year career in Accounting. It began in Texas as a corporate tax accountant at Pool Company. He there passed the Texas CPA exam. It was the beginning of the Oil Bust in Houston and Larry decided to move to Boston in 1984 to be with some of his Syracuse University friends and find employment there. He continued his accounting career in public accounting, later moving to internal auditing, general accounting, controller positions, and revenue accounting. His employers included Holdsworth, Burrell & Co., Martin D. Braver & Co., Stone & Webster Engineering Corporation, Brine Inc., The Westwood Group - Wonderland Greyhound Park, and most recently PeopleFluent Inc. Software.
He met his wife at Stone and Webster Engineering Corporation. Both were active in community activities, including the board of directors for a local chapter of the Junior Chamber of Commerce. They were married in June 1993 at the St. George Greek Orthodox Church in Springfield, MA and moved into their Framingham home in 1995. Before having children in late 2005, they enjoyed travel to many parts of the world, often visiting with friends and relatives in different countries and in some remote areas. Larry learned to sail while he lived in Alaska. He and his wife became members of Sail Newport for many years and he also joined a Sailing team for a couple years captained by one of their friends. He had many hobbies: enjoyed Civil War re-enacting with another close friend; enjoyed playing the guitar with his friends; and most recently rekindled his childhood passion for building model airplanes.
In 2002 as a hobby, he began to pursue a degree in Electrical Engineering at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston and earned 24 credit hours in physics, engineering mathematics, and circuit theory. After the twins were born he stopped pursuing this and devoted his time to playing and caring for them and taking them to museums, church youth activities, cub scouts, baseball, soccer, ballet, etc. He would enjoy bringing them back to New York City, where he grew up, and going on other family vacations to New Hampshire, Florida, and Arkansas.
Besides his wife and children, all of Framingham, MA, he leaves an older brother and sister-in-law, Raymond and Lee Ann Kreig of Anchorage, AK; an older brother Andrew Kreig and his longtime companion Mari Ann Hollis of Washington, DC; a younger stepbrother John Slater and his daughter Devon; his parents-in-law, Emanuel and Eva Markoulakis of Longmeadow; a brother-in-law and sister-in-law, George and Ursula Markoulakis of Longmeadow, MA; and many other beloved relatives and friends.
Visitations will be Thursday, March 5, 2015 from 4:00 to 7:00 pm at the John C. Bryant Funeral Home, 56 Pemberton Road (off Rte 30), Wayland. Funeral services at the funeral home on Friday, March 6, 2015 at 10:00 am will be followed by interment in Edgell Grove Cemetery, 53 Grove Street, Framingham. For those who desire, memorial gifts in Lawrence’s memory may be sent to the Melanoma Research Foundation, 1411 K Street, NW Suite 800, Washington, DC 20005 or St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church Memorial Fund, 57 Brown Street, Weston, MA 02493.
The family would like to thank their devoted network of family, friends, and colleagues who visited and helped frequently during Larry’s eight-month battle with melanoma; the caring staff at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and Dana Farber Cancer Institute; and Larry’s employer PeopleFluent; Vivian’s employer Staples; the children’s Hemenway school community; and the St. Demetrios church community for supporting them during this difficult time of Larry’s illness.