Richard Riordan

Richard J. Riordan, a Queens-born lawyer, businessman and former mayor of Los Angeles who led the city at a particularly divisive time and brought a free-enterprise approach to rebuilding the city’s infrastructure after a devastating earthquake in 1994, died in April 2023 at his home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles. He was 92. His daughter Patricia Riordan Torrey confirmed his death. A moderate Republican, Mr. Riordan came to politics in 1992. Richard Joseph Riordan was born on May 1, 1930, in Flushing, Queens, to William and Geraldine (Doyle) Riordan, the last of nine children in an Irish Catholic family. He grew up in New Rochelle, N.Y. Riordan entered Santa Clara University in California on a football scholarship in 1948 and two years later transferred to Princeton. He received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy there in 1952.After WWII he entered the University of Michigan Law School, graduating in 1956. Riordan’s first marriage, to Eugenia Waraday, lasted nearly 25 years but ended in divorce, as did his second marriage, to Jill Noel. He married Nancy Daly in 1998, and they divorced in 2008. In 2017, Mr. Riordan married Elizabeth Gregory, who survives him. In addition to Patricia, a child from his first marriage, he is survived by two more daughters from his first marriage, Mary Elizabeth Riordan and Kathleen Ann Riordan; a stepdaughter, Malia Gregory; a sister, Betty Hearty; and three grandchildren.