A Tribute to My Father

Raymond Lee Quave, March 26, 1949 - July 25, 2024

Raymond, age 20, while serving in the US Army.

Friends, my father lost his fight against cancer. Yesterday, we laid him to rest in the shade of two beautiful oak trees next to his mother and father. We had a lovely service at his church followed by full military honors at the graveside. My father shaped me into the woman I am today. It was he who fed my love for nature and the outdoors, he who showed me that my gender and disability could not set limits to what I might achieve. In today’s post, I’d like to share with you his obituary, but also a speech I wrote and read at his funeral service. The world is a less vibrant place without him it. I hope you’ll enjoy getting to know a little bit more about the great man I had the privilege of calling Daddy.

Obituary

On March 26^th, 1949, in Biloxi, Mississippi, Raymond Lee Quave was born third of four brothers to Jacob Lamar “J.L.” Quave, Jr. and Elizabeth Ann Bond. In 1955, the family moved to Arcadia, Florida, where Raymond spent the remainder of his life. After graduating from DeSoto County High School in 1967, he earned an associate’s degree in electronics. In 1969, he was drafted to enlist as an Army Infantryman for the war in Vietnam, where he served as a squad leader in the Americal Division. He was critically injured in 1970 and returned home with a Purple Heart, a Vietnam Service Medal with three Bronze Service Stars, a National Defense Service Medal, a Combat Infantryman Badge, and an Army Commendation Medal with an Oak Leaf Cluster for his service.

Raymond was the owner and operator of Raymond Quave Land Clearing, and his work in shaping the terrain of agricultural fields, golf courses, home sites, and housing developments can be seen throughout DeSoto and surrounding counties. He also volunteered his land clearing services for local churches and schools. Beyond his work, Raymond was an avid outdoorsman, enjoyed blacksmithing, and raced drag cars for fun. He was a loving father and grandfather and is survived by his two daughters, Cassandra Quave and Marnie Quave, his grandchildren, Trevor Robichaud, Donato Caputo, Isabella Caputo, and Giacomo Caputo, and his brothers, Charles Quave, Tommy Quave, and Walter Quave.

He fought a long and courageous battle against an aggressive cancer. His faith in God remained strong, his mind remained sharp, but eventually his body surrendered. Raymond peacefully passed surrounded by his loved ones on July 25^th, 2024.

Service Speech

Daddy and I with two of his grandkids.

How do you put a life into words? How can I put my father’s life into words? I can only share how I have known him for the past 46 years, through the eyes and experiences of being his daughter. But there are so many others that he has touched with his smile, his kindness, his deeds over the past 75 years. I’m sure you all have many more stories to share.

Raymond Lee Quave, my Daddy, was born in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1949, the third of four brothers. They moved to Arcadia in 1955, where his dad, J.L., ran a business blowing up pine stumps with dynamite and clearing land with heavy equipment. Now, there are all sorts of tales I’ve heard over the years about these brothers, the times they played with bows and arrows and accidentally—or maybe not by accident—shot the neighbors chickens. There were Sunday afternoons spent on their grandma’s porch in Mississippi with cousins making hand-churned ice cream. In Florida they escaped the summer heat in a swimming hole along Joshua creek where they also fished. And then there are the legends of Daddy and his brothers and friends racing cars all around DeSoto county or at the speedway.

Daddy graduated from DeSoto County High School in 1967 and then went to school at Tampa Tech where he earned an associates degree. He planned to pursue his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and was interning for a company learning how to work on computers—which were the size of this room back then—when he was drafted into the army just a couple of weeks after his 20^th birthday.

Anyone that knew daddy probably knows very little about his time in Vietnam. He didn’t like to talk about it. I only learned a little bit more about it from what he shared with me in these final weeks of his life and in the letters I found that he wrote to his grandmother and friends. He was an infantryman placed in the heat of things, deep in the jungles and mountains of the Central Highlands. He only got one new set of clothes and one shower a month. He’d been raised a country boy, familiar with the backwaters and swamps of DeSoto County, but Vietnam was something completely different. He lamented the unending heat and humidity and the mornings he woke up in his tent covered in leaches. In one letter he wrote that he felt he must have walked a thousand miles through those mountains where they were frequently caught in ambushes by the Viet Cong, forced to lay low for hours and then fight their way out.

He served in the Americal division tasked with carrying one of their largest machine guns—the 23 pound M60— in addition to his heavy rucksack.  Later was squad leader. He was near the end of his tour when he and his squad riding in an armored personnel carrier in North Vietnam ran over a hidden land mine, blowing the team sky high. Most died. Daddy was one of the few who survived, evacuated by helicopter and honorably discharged with a Purple Heart.

It wasn’t until his death as I searched for his military papers that I discovered just how highly decorated he’d become during that year of service. His honors included a Vietnam Service Medal with three Bronze Service Stars, a National Defense Service Medal, a Combat Infantryman Badge, and an Army Commendation Medal with an Oak Leaf Cluster.

He’d left home as a boy with an easy smile and returned a man shaped by the harsh tragedies of war. But he didn’t let it make him bitter. In his letters to his grandma Quave in Mississippi he wrote of his dreams of coming home to Arcadia to live a peaceful life where he appreciate the simple things. Over time, he found that easy smile again and healed with the help of his family and friends. Life moved forward. He married, started his own land clearing business, and my sister and I were born.

In spite his time at war, Daddy was never a violent man. I can’t remember a single time he ever spanked my sister or me. All it took was his look of disapproval when we acted up to get us back in line. He was patient, but only up to a point. I clearly remember some of the young men who used to work for him who would mess something up or take too long to get something done. You knew they were in trouble and that Daddy was mad if he took his hat off, slapped it against his thigh, looked down and shook his head, as if to say with his body language how in the world did you do that? THAT was a look I always tried my best to avoid.

Most of all I remember the lessons Daddy taught me through his actions. He showed me time and again the importance of a strong work ethic. He always did a job to the best of his abilities and held expectations that others would do the same. To this day there is nothing that bothers me more than a half-done job. He also taught me that if I could dream things—even big things—they could be achieved. That my only limit was my imagination and my willingness to work hard at it and get the job done. I remember one Saturday morning as a child waking up to tell him about a vivid dream I had of a tree house. We drew out the design together and he built it just as I imagined. He taught me how to make dreams come true.

Daddy showed my sister and I how to make things using his hands, whether by wood working or welding, or using heavy equipment to shape the land. He also fed into our sense of adventure. When digging out the front pond, he would let us climb up into the bucket of his big excavator and bring it high in the air so we could jump into the pond.

Daddy demonstrated to us time and again with his actions that we weren’t limited by gender or disability. He taught me to drive the tractor by the age of 12 and the other pieces of heavy equipment—the bulldozer, dump truck, backhoe, front end loader—by 15, and let me tell you, he put me to work! There were many weekends and summer days when I’d get up with him at dawn to head to his job site deep in the woods. The idea that I, as a disabled girl with one leg couldn’t work in the woods all day side by side with him running 40-ton heavy equipment never occurred to him. It is because of that belief he had in me, those expectations that I work alongside him, that I’ve been able to take on big challenges and conquer them in my own career. Through his actions, through his words, and through the normalization of dreaming big and doing great things, he forged me into something fiercer than would have otherwise been possible.

Daddy’s love and support for my sister and I was never fickle. He has always been steadfast. When I turned 20 and shared my dream of traveling to the Amazon rainforest to do research, he told me of course I had to go. He came up with the money to help me get there. He knew sending me off into the jungle, away from contact with the outside world for six weeks, that I would be fine. And I was. The Amazon felt like home to me, with so many similarities to the adventures I’d shared with him in the swamps and rivers of south Florida. Only there instead of alligators, there were caiman. Instead of rattle snakes, there were fer de lances. I was never afraid because he’d taught me how to be safe, how to survive on the land.

It's hard for me to imagine a world without him in it. Daddy has always been my compass.

Driving around Arcadia this week, I’ve been reminded that there are signs of him everywhere. There are the many volunteer jobs he did clearing land for local churches and shaping out sports fields for our schools. Then there are the house pads he built, orange groves he shaped, and the housing developments too. Long before there was ever the big Walmart in town, Daddy transformed the land across the street into the layout for what would become Arcadia Village. I remember long days working at the job site with him there, hauling huge loads of dirt back and forth in the dump truck that he filled with his backhoe.

Beyond his work, Daddy knew how to have a good time. He loved to sing, whether it was here in Pine Level in the choir or at the Elk’s Lodge with karaoke. He nurtured his creative side with blacksmithing projects. The last knife he gave me he built from a crowbar and a lawnmower blade that he forged himself and set with a deer antler handle. He loved fast cars and drag racing and this is something he passed on to his grandsons.

He was also an avid gardener, something he learned from his mother, and loved to show off his plump avocados, lychee, mangos and papaya he grew in his yard. He’d send us boxes of jelly he’d made himself from the fruit he’d grown at home each year to us in Atlanta. I’ll forever treasure our time with him last Thanksgiving when he taught all four of his grandchildren how to harvest sugarcane and make molasses, cooked in a large cauldron over a fire.

And oh, did he love those grandbabies, and they love him. Hands down the happiest pictures I could find of Daddy were ones with a grandbaby in his arms or on his shoulders. As they grew older, he had begun to teach them the same lessons he had me and my sister, how to clean and shoot a gun, how to fish, how to garden, and how to make things with their hands.

He was the best man I’ve ever known, the one against I will forever measure all others.

The last months of Daddy’s life were tough, mostly spent in and out of the hospital in painful conditions. Over the past three weeks at his bedside I never saw him give up. He remained optimistic and full of courage. His mind was whip sharp and his faith incredibly strong. All the while the cancer grew, the rest of his body stayed strong. Even though he was intubated most of this time, he somehow fought the sedation medicine and was conscious for much of this time, able to communicate by writing with me. His doctors told me over and again they’d never seen anything like it-they’d never seen anyone able to withstand the pain and discomfort of the breathing tube while being awake and aware.

But Daddy wasn’t just any ordinary man. He wanted to be present. He wanted to put his affairs in order. He wanted to communicate with his loved ones. He asked me to read Psalms 41 to give us both strength. We prayed together and with others. He wrote over and again, the “Lord is with Me.” He had me calling friends, cousins, brothers and putting their voices on speaker phone, pointing at the paper of what I was to tell them because he wanted them to know that he was going to fight this disease until his last breath. He wanted to reassure his loved ones that everything would be ok.

And everything will be okay because just as he told me again and again, the Lord is with him. The Lord has called him home. He is at peace now.