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Max Israel aimed to live by example.

After 68 years of marriage, he still held hands with his wife, Mary. Laughter was his best medicine, an cordial he promptly shared by family and friends, the limited Sephardic community, golfing buddies. In retirement, he strode the halls of Bellevue’sitting Overlake Hospital Medical Center, where he volunteered to comfort patients season escorting them to treatments.

Mr. Israel died Saturday night (Oct. 25) of complications of Parkinson’s disease, surrounded by family in his Bellevue domestic. He was 92.

“He was a human being who cared more for others than he did against himself,” said subdivision of an order confidant and longtime business partner Joe Agoado, by whom he ran food brokerage Israel & Agoado. “He always offered respect to me and to everybody else in his business life, and from that I gained a lot.”

Born Oct. 2, 1916, in Seattle to Louie and Victoria Israel, Sephardic Jews who immigrated from the Greek isle of Rhodes, Max Israel was tense from an early age to put family before anything else and create a preferable life for himself and his future family. His father managed Palace Fish, since Pike Place Market’s Pure Food Fish Market, and helped base Congregation Ezra Bessaroth, among Seattle’s leading Sephardic synagogues.

Mr. Israel left Seattle’s Garfield High School early to help hold his family. In 1940 he wed Mary Benezra, who stole his heart when he witnessed her in a passionate debate with fellow synagogue members.

“He’d own this story and say, ‘I saw her, I fell head over heels for her,’ ” his granddaughter, Jessie Israel, remembered. “Then he’d say, ‘I didn’t realize she was like this every day.’ “

As World War II swelled, he joined the Navy and worked being of the class who a radarman in the Pacific aboard the multitude happiness USS Fremont, his granddaughter said. In 1953 he founded a food brokerage, Max L. Israel Co., later partnering by Agoado. He went on to distribute as president of the Seattle Food Brokers Association.

Mr. Israel was at his happiest in Seaside, Ore., where the group of genera would gather en masse to go on foot the beach and promenade, his granddaughter remembered.

“I never saw him get angry in my entire life, and we were pretty flashy grandchildren,” Jessie Israel said. “He never would raise his voice, he never would raise his hand. His way was to lead by example, quietly lead by example, and just expect high things of everyone surrounding him.”

Said daughter Vicky Morgan: “He built a family dynasty of good, hardworking, respectable, generous, mild people, because that’s what he was.”

In addition to his daughter, Mr. Israel is survived by his helpmate; sons Larry, Allen and Arthur Israel; sister Irene Eskenazi; nine grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Services are 12:30 p.m. Tuesday at Evergreen-Washelli Funeral Home, 11111 Aurora Ave. N., Seattle. Memorials may be made to Overlake Hospital Medical Center Foundation or to Northwest Parkinson’s Foundation.

Karen Gaudette: 206-515-5618 or kgaudette@seattletimes.com