In life, it’s the little things that count.
Leading a remarkable life isn’t always about doing remarkable things. To a family, it means being the steady hand at the wheel, being a role model, being an example, and making the seemingly unremarkable experiences in life remarkable.
It may sound simple, but being successful at doing the little things seldom is.
Leroy Dale Lovette Sr. passed away in April of last year. He left behind a legacy of eight children, 21 grandchildren, 36 great-grandchildren, and four great-great-grandchildren.
He worked at the John J. Pershing VA Medical Center for over 15 years after he retired from the Air Force as a master sergeant in 1979. He had served for 24 years.
Born in Parma, he moved back to the area and bought a farm outside Poplar Bluff, where he fished, worked the land, tinkered, made improvements to his home and spent time with his family. Twice married, he had four children from his first wife Corine Stokes – Michael Lovette, 66, of Casa Grande, Arizona; Larry Lovette, 64, of Farmington; Denise Twedell, 61, of Berrien Springs, Michigan; and Paula Williams, 59, of Eloy, Arizona.
In 1965, he married Catherine Elizabeth Bonnard and had four children with her – Leroy D. Lovette Jr., 55; Kevin Lovette, 53; Karen Shannon, 51; and Kenneth Lovette, 49, who all live in Poplar Bluff.
Catherine passed away in 2011.
Leroy’s sons would follow in their father’s footsteps by first joining the military, and later Kevin and Leroy Jr. would work at the VA medical center with their brother-in-law, Tim Shannon. Kevin is a registered nurse and Leroy Jr. is a biomedical equipment support specialist. Their sister, Karen, works at the Sears Youth Center as a special education teacher.
These are facts and a timeline of Leroy Lovette’s life. They are a story of a family who proudly served in the military, and continues to serve, by taking care of their fellow veterans at the VA and helping special needs children.
His legacy lives on at home and at the place he worked, but the impact he made on his family is more than the sum of its parts.
When Leroy Jr. speaks of his father, he can’t help but be overcome with emotions, needing a moment to collect himself before making the statement that may truly define Leroy Lovette, Sr.
“He was my best friend.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by his brother, Kevin.
“I love my dad very much, and I love everything he did for me in my life, and my siblings feel that way too. And obviously, I probably wouldn’t be where I am in my life if it wasn’t for everything he has done,” Kevin said.
Leroy Sr. was a natural-born tinkerer. He was always working on something or improving the house he lived in, and was an invaluable resource for the family when it came to their own home improvement projects.
Kevin remembers his father’s fascination with repairing things.
“I come walking into the living room a year or two before he passed, and I go in there and he had an engine from a chainsaw totally ripped apart on the table next to his couch, and I’m like ‘why are you working on this chainsaw? You got like six of them out there. Why do you have to work on this, why are you doing this?’”
His father’s reply?
“It’s not running right, and I’ve got nothing else better to do than to take it apart and fix it,” Leroy Sr. said.
Leroy also told of his father’s last project.
“In the fall of 2019, he decided he was going to add an addition to his house, and he literally built it by himself,” Leroy said. “He got to the point where he was getting ready to go on the roof and put roofing on it, and I’m like ‘no, you let us boys do it. I don’t want you getting on a ladder and falling off and getting hurt.’”
His father didn’t stay put for long though.
“Well, we were getting low on shingles, and next thing I know, I turn around and I see my dad,” Leroy recalled. “I hear the ladder hit the side of the building and here he comes.”
For the last nine years of his life, Leroy Sr. battled multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells.
“He has cancer and broken ribs, and so his ribs are hurt, and he put some shingles on his shoulder and walked up the ladder to bring them to me,” Leroy Jr. continued. “There wasn’t anything he was afraid to learn to take apart and put back together. He’s just kind of a Jack of all trades, and that’s the part I think he really, really enjoyed.”
Leroy Jr. admitted the relationship he and his siblings had with his father was different than the relationship his dad had with the children from his first marriage. But, Leroy Sr. had the opportunity to mend fences with them.
“I think he wished things would have gone differently with the kids from his first marriage,” Leroy Jr. said. “It was just a big deal to have family reunions at each place, and at his last family reunion, my other four siblings from his first marriage all came in and he made peace with them.”
They lost their mom a couple of years or two before Leroy Sr. passed.
“I think that may have set in with them and they thought dad’s not going to be here much longer, and they made amends,” Leroy Jr. said.
At the end of the day, it boils down to this: To be a good father, you must be a good man, and Leroy Lovette, Sr., quietly lived his life and did his best, In his family’s eyes, his efforts did not go unappreciated.
“Out of all the characteristics my dad had, and he has a lot of good ones and some bad ones like everybody else,” Kevin shared, “the one thing that I have always hoped and tried to emulate as much as he would demonstrate is his self-reliance, but I know I haven’t been nearly as good at it as he was.
“And that’s the thing I’ve probably admired most about him, that kind of mentality, that American spirit that we don’t really see enough today, and that a lot of us really should try and emulate.”
And that’s what makes a life remarkable –when you have earned the respect of the people in your life and been the best father you can be.