Tetsuo "Ted" Suzukamo, a small businessman in the Los Angeles area restaurant service industry, passed away peacefully Dec. 22 in Montebello. He was 93.

Ted, as he was known to everyone, was born on the island of Kauai. He was the youngest child of Katsuji and Shima. For the early part of his life, the family lived in the mountains of the Wailua Homesteads where his father was an irrigation worker who controlled the canals that fed the sugar cane fields below.

The family later moved to town in Kapaa where Ted became a multi-sport athlete — notably football — for Kapaa High School. After graduation in 1947, he joined the military and left the islands. He was stationed in post-war Japan, rising to the rank of technical sergeant in the Air Force.

After finishing his enlistment, he struck out to Chicago, where he met and married Aiko Kagami. The family moved to Los Angeles in the late 1950s.

Ted worked for a L.A. restaurant service company for many years before starting a two-man partnership in the 1970s with his friend, Edward Morales.

Ted was a humble man with a broad sense of humor, who liked to lampoon the rich, the famous or the self-important. He loved humorous stories about immigrants like his parents who struggled to fit into America. He was a dedicated family man who would take his four children out to one of the local high schools to shoot hoops, run around the track until they got tired or toss a baseball. Afterwards, he sometimes took the family to the old Carnation Ice Cream building on Wilshire Boulevard for a treat. He and the family regularly visited Little Tokyo to walk around and maybe buy the children mochi.

While Ted enjoyed all sports, he later turned away from watching professional and college sports because they had become dominated by big money. Instead, he drove to his children's old high school long after they had graduated to watch football games there. He enjoyed the pureness of competition for its own sake.

He was a natural athlete, so when his competitive juices rekindled during the 1984 LA Olympics, he took up jogging. This led him to befriend a group of kindred spirits who all trained and raced together in Griffith Park, entering numerous 5 and 10 kilometer road races, half marathons and ultimately finishing the 1988 LA Marathon.

He and Aiko encouraged their children to use the public library and filled their apartment with some of his favorite books, including the historical fiction of James Mitchener and the westerns of Larry McMurtry.  He took the family on road trips to Sequoia and Yosemite national parks and the Grand Canyon and he passed along his love for Hawaiian music to his children as well as the big band sound of his generation. He also on occasion displayed a talent for quick sketches and caricature, something that started in high school.

Ted was preceded in death by his siblings Sho Nishida, Richard Masaru Nishida, Masue (Nishida) Nishimitsu, Alice Asako (Nishida) Yonekura, Yoshio Suzukamo and Mieko Suzukamo. He is survived by his wife Aiko, daughters Charlotte Suzukamo, of Montebello and Audrey Tina Reinhardt, of Star, ID, and sons Leslie Suzukamo, of Vadnais Heights, MN and Arnold Suzukamo of Los Angeles and two adult grandchildren.

In lieu of koden, the family asks that donations be made to the charity of their choice in Ted's name.