Using data from Lipid Research Clinics study participants at visit 2 (3972 and 2346 adult men and women), we examined the hypothesis that parental mortality from cardiovascular disease (CVD) or cancer before age 60 predicts their adult progeny's lipid and lipoprotein levels. Weighted regression analysis was used to control for the potential effect of progeny's other CVD risk factors (age, systolic blood pressure, Quetelet index, cigarette smoking, and alcohol consumption), and to assess for the effect of progeny's parental cause-specific mortality status on progeny's lipids and lipoproteins. Nearly all of the statistically significant parent-progeny predictions were for sons. Paternal death from CVD before age 60 years was associated with significantly higher plasma total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels in sons and (at marginal significance) in daughters, when compared with those in reference progeny with paternal survival over age 60 or over age 75. Maternal death from CVD before 60 was associated with lower levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) in sons. Paternal and maternal death from cancer before age 60 years were associated with higher triglyceride levels in adult sons than in sons whose parents had lived beyond ages 60 and 75. Paternal all-cause mortality before age 60 was associated with higher cholesterol and triglycerides in sons; maternal all-cause mortality before age 60 was associated with depression of HDL-C in sons. Familial aggregation of lipids and lipoproteins may account, in part, for familial aggregation of CVD. Knowledge of family history facilitates identification of progeny at higher risk for CVD by virtue of elevated cholesterol or LDL-C, or reduced HDL-C.