Leonidas P. Econom — Leo in the family — was born in New York City around 1926, of Greek-American heritage. The surname Econom is almost certainly an Anglicization of Οικονόμου (“Oikonomou”), one of the great Greek-American surname patterns. The “P.” middle initial likely encodes his patronymic — his own father’s first name — following the same Greek convention that Lazaros’s children used.
He married Rhea “Lula” Jeannopoulos around 1950, and they were married for sixty-two years. In 1964 they pulled up stakes in New York and moved to California, where they founded Econom Tax Service in Northridge — the California-Greek-American small-business arc, two New Yorkers heading west into a sunbelt that was, in 1964, only just starting to find its postwar boom. In 1977 they opened a restaurant in Las Vegas with their friend and client Jack Tucey.
They raised six children together: Peter, Jo Ann, Cathy, Christine, Stephanie, and Kim. He survived Rhea’s death in 2012 by eleven and a half years, and died April 5, 2024, in Northridge, California, at age 98.