The Story of Dad

The forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow. – Leonardo da Vinci

Dad arrived on this earth the day after Christmas 1943 in Roswell, New Mexico¹, firstborn son to 19-year old Walter Don Loudermilk, an enlisted Navy sailor, and his 16-year old wife Loretta (Mounce). The circumstances of being born in this location are lost but it is assumed my grandparents had no roots there. It may have just been one of the temporary dwellings for a typical military family during the Second World War. Eventually Dad would become the eldest of four boys. Roddy was born in 1947 and twins Donnie and Ronnie came in 1949; and it would be approximately 1950 when the story turned for the worse for all but one of this entire clan.

Like some sort of precursory James Dean, my grandfather was one of those good-looking men who had a swept-back crown of hair and a cool, sly grin. He was musically talented enough to wield a guitar and croon over the airwaves in Ft. Worth, Texas where they lived after the war. Even his band at times was hired to play behind a few of the big-name Nashville radio stars. Back then, artists could not afford to bring an entire group of backing musicians on tour so they simply hired local instrumentalists to play with them on stage. My grandfather played with the likes of Hank Snow and Tex Ritter when they rolled into town. It was during this time, with a ring on his finger, that he fell for his femme fatale, a woman named Norma. After their affair had gone on for some time, Loretta found a love letter from Norma in Don’s chest of drawers and confronted him. My grandmother was not a woman given to wasting her energy on a man who no longer loved her and she asked him to leave. It was at this crossroad that Walter Don Loudermilk decided to close a deal with the devil. And thus, when Lloyd Ray was merely eight years old, his father told him goodbye and like some haunting, Americana dirge drove off down a dusty road never to return. He never called. He did not write. He did not send birthday cards or Christmas presents to any of Loretta’s children. I have wondered if he might have tried, only to have his measly efforts short-circuited by Norma.  I’m not certain of that, but I have often wondered how a man could abandon his own children as if he were leaving unwanted pups at the animal shelter.

I believe my father searched every day of his remaining lucid life for the answer to that question. From that point forward, he was forever changed. He would ramble through life permanently insecure, always trying to prove his worth to anyone who might deem it upon him. He was transformed into a cruel moralist, exerting his will to control his, and eventually his children’s, behavior to avoid any risk of pain, as if self-castigation might prevent any heartache. He secretly walked through the world with the proverbial chip on his shoulder; one moment as Cheerio as cereal, the next a volcanic outburst set off by anyone whom he sensed was attempting to lord over him. Unsuspecting acquaintances of my father who made the mistake of bragging about how tough they were, unleashed an instantaneous green Hulk. He made certain you understood you were not, nor would you ever be, in control of him. I’ve witnessed him, multiple times, lift grown men off the floor with his bare hands and threaten to throw them across the room for only lobbing a teasing threat in his general direction, the whole time smiling like a mad man. In a duality of sorts, he has always been perpetually grateful for life, optimistic and ever willing to lend a hand to anyone in need. These traits will become evident as forthcoming stories unfold. But one must try to grasp the darkness with which he has been at war since the day his father deserted him.

My grandmother struggled forevermore as well. The realities of a divorced mother striving to keep a handful of children fed and clothed in 1950’s America was hard enough. You may as well have sewn a crimson letter on her dress. Her own mother had died of illness when Loretta was 8 years old and moving her kids in with her father and stepmother for some reason was not a viable option. Instability became part of their existence, moving from state to state, trailer park to trailer park, or living with whichever family members might have them temporarily, and searching for scrap work for tiny pay with no formal education or training. She also bore a fifth child, my beautiful aunt Lynn, in 1952, but never told anyone about the biological father. Even when asked years later my grandmother would change the subject and classify the question as inconsequential, ancient history. To the day she died in 2000 she was never in one place for any amount of time. I remember her as sweet, funny and generous. But her persona appeared to always be weighed down by a former tragedy.

So it would happen that Lloyd became the reluctant father figure to his siblings. A kid dreaming of a normal boy’s life was now forced to fill the vacancy of a fatherless family, taking care of his brothers and sister while his mother worked various shifts. He referred to himself as the General and his brothers were Lieutenant, Captain, and Major. I remember a story he told many times where he placed all three of them on one bicycle (one on the seat, one on the frame and one on the handlebars while he himself stood on the pedals) and powered them all the way to the local drive-in theater, sneaking the entire band of brothers through the gates without paying. With his mother earning not much more than $40 per week, soles of donated shoes were easily worn through, pants hung short over the ankles and the most menial meals, macaroni or soup, were slurped into hungry bellies. By the 8^th grade he dropped out of school to work 12-hour-per-day farm jobs such as baling hay to make certain they did not go hungry. Lloyd eventually left home to get married at age 19, and so strong was his role as provider to his mother and siblings they have shared stories of feeling re-abandoned on his own wedding day.

There is a brighter ending to this story. In 1970, Dad, who by this time was married and a father of two – namely me and my younger brother Kelly – determined it was time to get his young family out of the rat race of Los Angeles where we were born. He accepted a frozen warehouse job a friend of the family had recommended in Atlanta offered by the Oscar Mayer meat company. It would be not too much later he would drive a truck for them, but that’s a story for another chapter. To facilitate the family move, he decided to drive his Volkswagen Beetle cross county to get everything established before flying the rest of us to our new home in Georgia. On this trip he made a slight northeasterly detour to Lee’s Summit, Missouri, a small suburb outside of Kansas City. The purpose: to track down his father whom he had not seen or heard from since that fateful day nearly twenty years earlier. He did not know the address, so he asked around town until he was able to pull up in his father’s driveway unannounced. Don had married Norma and had fathered five more children- an entirely new family. Their youngest daughter Becky was still in high school and living at home. Because of Lloyd’s determined attempt to bury the painful memories and bitterness of his childhood, I don’t believe he confronted his father with the “why” question. Maybe it was good enough just to see him and to sit and chat with his father again. And just maybe because he knew Christ by this time, he had the strength to forgive even the most heinous sins of a father. The day he tracked him down, Dad would find out years later from Norma, forever changed my grandfather too. Apparently he had been living under a mountain of guilt. But his firstborn son had chopped that mountain down with one momentous, surprise visit and a long-overdue reunion.

When I was 8 years old, Grandpa Don, Norma, and Becky came to visit us in Georgia. Grandpa took us all down to Disney World in Florida. He bought me a ‘coon skin cap just like Daniel Boone’s and we had a grand time. At that young age, I had no idea the connection between what he had done so long ago and how that had transformed my father. Looking back now and studying Dad’s ever-present insecurities, it had obviously exacted a humongous toll. That wrenching desertion has impacted my life as well, although quietly and without me realizing it sometimes – like a dark cloud hanging overhead you can’t seem to locate. But I believe it was painfully forgiven and released by my Dad. I’m thankful their relationship was mended. Grandpa Don passed away in 2008, suffering too from Alzheimer’s.

There’s one other fact for which I’m extremely grateful: my father never abandoned me or my siblings. Now in regards to being a great husband to our mother, he had serious self-challenges to face, as anyone married to someone who uses control tactics to fight insecurity will tell you. That is another story. But let me make this point crystal clear: we always had food on our table; we always had good shoes on our feet; we had bicycles and we had family dinners; we went to church together; we saw the first Star Wars movie together; and because of Dad we all learned at a very early age to appreciate all sorts of music. We went on vacations when they could be afforded on a truck-driver’s salary. Dad worked long hours nearly every day of his sane life to provide our needs. He might even object if we had macaroni or soup for dinner, even though we secretly begged Mom for them. He was so scarred in his childhood, he did everything in his power to make certain we were spared that experience. And we were, beyond any doubt whatsoever, certainly spared.

¹ Music legend Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr. (a.k.a. John Denver) was also born in Roswell, only five days after my father. I wonder if they were in the hospital nursery at the same time.