'Second-favorite son' behind viral obituary shares story behind unique tribute

Jun. 19—"He will be moderately missed."

"We don't know if he was married, but he definitely was a lady's man."

"As a gluttonous eater of fried foods and snack cakes, as well as the occasional chili cheese dog ..."

None of the above are lines one might expect to come from the average obituary — but James Loveless didn't live an average life, and it wouldn't have been fitting for him to have an average obituary.

Loveless, a Pulaski Countian who passed away on June 14 at age 60, has become known far and wide as the result of the obituary for him placed on the Pulaski Funeral Home website recently.

The humorous, outside-the-box tone of the obit — available to read at https://www.pulaskifuneralhome.com/obituaries — comes courtesy of his son Rocky Loveless, who is identified in the text as being his father's "second-favorite" son behind brother Rodney of Science Hill — "and I'm OK with that," he noted to the Commonwealth Journal.

It all made for a social media sensation just in time for Father's Day this past weekend that has turned out to be a blessing in a time of need for those James left behind.

Rocky said he got a call the day before James passed away informing him that his father was "doing pretty bad." Rocky, a former middle school teacher and current baseball umpire who lives near Phoenix, Arizona, bought a plane ticket and came back to Kentucky as fast as he was able.

"I was laying over in Las Vegas, and right before I boarded the plane to fly to Nashville (en route to Kentucky), I get a call from my sister, and I knew what the call was about — I knew my dad had passed," he said. "I was on my way to see him, and I didn't make it in time.

"I was really frustrated, but I knew that I wanted to write the obituary," he added. "I'd never done it, and when we met with Michelle Godbey at Pulaski Funeral Home, I asked her (about it). I said, 'I've read a lot of them, but I really don't know how to do it.' And she said, 'Just talk about him.' And that's exactly what I did."

Rocky then drove to a gravel parking lot around Ky. 1247 and Norwood Road. "I sat there and it took me about 10 minutes, and I wrote about my dad," he said. "I didn't let anybody else know what I was writing because I knew that they would be like, 'No, don't do that,' but I knew what I wanted and I knew what Dad would have wanted."

So he sent the email to Pulaski Funeral Home, and "that was that." The obituary went up on the website, and almost immediately, it started getting traction on Facebook and local social media — and then beyond Pulaski County's borders as well as more and more people shared it, impressed with the unflinching honesty and offbeat humor in the obituary which began, "Born and raised in Kentucky in 1963-a state that has been recently leaning toward more liberal values, we might add — Jamie, a divorcee, father, grandfather and proud owner of a few lots in the trailer park, had had enough and up and died on us on June 14th in order to avoid another Presidential stolen-election mishap in the near future."

Rocky, who said that he's always felt more comfortable communicating and expressing feelings through writing rather than speaking, thought it would make his friends and family laugh, he said, but had no idea "it would make people all over the world laugh."

He added, "I'm like 'What in the world is happening?' I look at the views on my dad's obituary, and it's close to around 670,000, and that's just the obituary, that's not counting all the tweets that have been retweeted and other websites, which have talked about it. It's really mind-boggling to me."

The obituary celebrated James love of grilling out ("... James was seen in his back yard at the trailer park during the early hours of the morning, hammering beers, standing over country-style ribs, and yelling, "It's got a head like a cat on it!" ...), a pair of colorful old boxer shorts, and things like ice-cold Busch, room-temperature Busch, T-bones, New York strip, prime rib, shrimp, swimming, poker, hatch-back Mustang GTs, tank-tops, Kentucky Men's basketball, and his personal copy of Eddie Murphy's Raw" — the only things he might have loved as much or more than his family, notes the obit.

Another part celebrates James' success with the ladies: "There was Kathy, Mary Lou, Tammy, Debra, Carrie, Tina, etc., etc. 'It's the bones,' he told us as proudly pointed his skinny, pasty-white legs. 'Women love a good shin.' We think he might even have some females waiting for him on the other side."

Rocky noted that James was married to a couple of the women mentioned above, both of whom are deceased, which prompted the last sentence of the above paragraph.

The family themselves have been "really positive and upbeat about it," said Rocky. "This has really cushioned the blow of losing my dad, or being separated from my dad for a time at least, because we see how happy it's made everybody else."

He noted that his brother had recorded a broadcast of the Kentucky Sports Radio program where the hosts were discussing the obituary, and "sounded so proud" that this was made by and about his family.

Tyler Hibbard, Pulaski Funeral Home Funeral Director, said the obituary has been "a first" for their business and likely the most traffic they've had on a single obituary — he said that the last time they checked, they were over 600,000 views just on their website alone. But Hibbard is quick to note that what matters is what the obituary has meant to the Loveless family.

"I would say it's certainly a true celebration of their dad's life and we're very supportive of that," said Hibbard. "We're all about serving the family and their needs during that time."

So was everything in the obituary that was said about James Loveless true?

"Yes," said Rocky — with one exception.

"Dad never said, 'Women love a good shin.' That just doesn't make sense," he laughed. "But he knew that he had super-chicken legs, and everybody knew it, and everybody talked to him about it. If I was to take a picture of a golf ball on a tee and I put a picture of my dad right beside it, they would have the same shape.

"We would always make fun of his chicken legs," added Rocky, "and I thought, 'There's one good jab I can get in.' But everything else was true."

Rocky noted that James was born in Somerset and lived "all over." His own best memories with his dad are from a trailer park behind the old Burkmann Feed store in northern Pulaski County, where James owned a number of lots.

And, he observed, he might have picked up some of his old man's traits along the way.

"He burned his candle on both ends," said Rocky. "My granny, she would always tell me, 'Be careful, you're burning your candle on both ends.' And I'm like, 'Well isn't a candle meant to be burnt?' There's a part of me that's definitely my dad and I'm not even just talking about DNA. I'm that guy, and I hope to be that one who people have those funny stories about as well."

Rocky didn't know when he wrote the now-famous obituary how it would ultimately be received, but it's turned out to be an unexpected blessing for him personally — and for people who didn't even know his father.

"When I got the news, I told my wife, 'I did my crying over here (in Arizona).' Because I figured that other people would do their crying (in Kentucky) and I could be the strong one," he said. "They wouldn't have to see me break down, so I could be strong for them.

"I don't think this hype will last forever, so it might be a little harder later on, but for right now, it's really helped out, and it's really helped me because other people in the guestbook, I read their comments and stuff and they're like, 'We're so happy that you did this, because this is real. This is unapologetic. This was your dad,'" he added. "There were people who were like, 'I've never met your dad, and I felt like I knew him my whole life.' I think that everybody has a little part of James Loveless in them, or at least wants to."

And Rocky is confident that somewhere out there, James is loving the attention the obit is getting as well.

"A lot of people think that when you die, you're gone, but that's not what I think," he said. "I believe that he's in another place. We might not be able to see him, we can feel him sometimes; he might be in another place just waiting for us to get to the BBQ over there."