Jerry Yost Conner Jr. April 27, 1963 - April 12, 2020

Yost died today. He was adamant everyone understand he did not lose his fight with cancer. The fucking cancer died with him.

Yost grew up in Alexandria, VA, the son of Ammie Todd Conner and the late Jerry Yost Conner Sr. Yost was a 1981 graduate from Fort Hunt High School. He was an honors graduate from Virginia Tech with a Bachelor of Architecture. At Tech Yost joined Alpha Rho Chi fraternity where he made lifelong friends. Yost earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law. While at UVA, Yost was a Dillard Fellow, Editor-in-Chief of the Virginia Environmental Law Journal, and Best Brief Award winner in the First Year Legal Research & Writing Program.
Yost practiced commercial real estate with Squire Patton Boggs, formerly Patton Boggs LLC, internationally for 20 years. He represented some of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds with investments in the United States. He was involved in almost every asset class of commercial real estate and influenced almost every kind of building the mind can imagine. Yost worked on projects from Washington, D.C.’s premier convention hotel, to several foreign embassies, to representing the purchaser of the Chrysler Building in New York City. When asked his most important work, Yost immediately answered his 7 year pro bono work with The Community of Hope, a non- profit dedicated to serving underserved populations in Washington, D.C. He guided the center through the land acquisition process, then the designing and financing what has become the Conway Medical Center in Southeast D.C. Yost started working on this project just after his cancer diagnosis. He said he benefited from excellent medical care and wanted that for others.

Cancer does not care who it takes, who it hurts. It came into Yost’s life, our lives, 13 years ago. Yost lived those years with dignity, joy and adventure as cancer took him piece by piece. He traveled to every state and all 7 continents. He saw both Maggie and Nick graduate college and Maggie earn her masters degree. He walked Maggie down the aisle and danced with her to Butterfly Kisses at the reception. He rejoiced when Virginia legalized same sex marriage and married Sam, the man of his dreams. Yost also lived to welcome a grandchild and his “heart grew three sizes that day”.

Yost is survived by his husband, Robert Samuel Taylor; his daughter, Margaret Conner Grant, her husband, Willie Alexander and their son Aaron Xavier; his son, Nicholas William Conner; his mother, Ammie Todd Conner; his sister, Kathleen Conner Grieff, her husband, Brian David; his nephew, David Wayt Grieff and his wife, Dr. Melani Suzanne Grieff; his nephew, Conner Charles Grieff and his wife, April Lynne Grosskopf; as well as numerous friends.

Yost’s greatest joy were his children. He was proud of them both every day. Yost was always grateful to Barbara Tragakis Conner for the gift of their children.
In the end, there was grace. Surrounded by love, Yost found peace and joined his dad on this side of the Rainbow Bridge.

The immediate family will privately celebrate Yost’s incredible life and host a party for extended family and friends at a later date. Don’t send flowers. Buy yourself a nice bottle of wine, toast Yost, remember time shared, and smile.

Don’t postpone joy!