Lawrence Allen “Larry” Leavell

April 17, 1953 - August 29, 2026

Lawrence Allen "Larry" Leavell, of Lake Forest, California, passed away peacefully on Saturday, August 29, at the age of 73. He was born April 17, 1953, in Marion County, Indiana, the third of seven children born to Wilbur Cecil "Bud" Leavell and Ruth Ann Cain. To everyone who loved him, he was simply "Larry."

Larry was generous to a fault and incapable of insincerity. He was practical, curious, independent, and uncommonly willing to help. Those qualities remained remarkably consistent throughout his life.

Larry grew up in Johnson County on his family's small truck farm south of Acton. He began his high school career at Whiteland High School and completed it at Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis. From an carly age, he worked on local farms and held a variety of jobs, including delivering newspapers by bicycle through all seasons.

Larry's enthusiasm for bicycling sometimes took him considerably farther than his paper route. As a young man, he once rode from Indiana all the way to South Florida and back. Those carly years of working, building. fixing, and exploring, and voracious reading gave him an extraordinary range of practical, historical, and scientific knowledge. There seemed to be very little Larry could not do.

Larry served as a Medic in U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. His service included supporting intercontinental medical evacuations between Vietnam and the United States aboard a surgical-suite aircraft, helping bring wounded soldiers home. He also served as a liaison to a Lao Army unit, part of the U.S. involvement in Laos that was covert at the time and has since been declassified. There, he worked with Boualay Saysana. After the war, Larry was instrumental in bringing Boualay and his family to the United States in 1976 from a refugee camp in Thailand, an accomplishment Larry considered one of the most meaningful of his life.

While stationed at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Larry met his first wife, Michaele Jo "Mykie" Kocher, the daughter of a retired Army colonel. He completed his military service in 1975 at the rank of corporal.

Having worked many jobs since childhood, the G.I. Bill supported Larry through his studies in programming and computer science. Computing became his life's work, well suited to someone who had always loved understanding how things worked and solving problems. A specialist in the Business BASIC language, he spent much of the 1990s and early 2000s contracting across Southern California and developed a reputation as an exceptionally skilled BBX, C, and C++ programmer. He considered his work with Carlton Forge Works a particular high point of his programming

Larry was the father of four children, Loverly Larina, Tara, Justine, and Lawson. He delighted in sharing with them his love of learning, reading. science, history, travel, new cultures, singing, theme parks, swimming, hiking, cooking, baking, and spontaneous adventures. He particularly admired Walt Disney's celebration of American history and different cultures, as well as his emphasis on kindness and animal welfare.

Those who knew Larry describe his life by its generosity. For decades, he gave blood every month to strangers he would never meet and who would never know his name. He volunteered with his homeowners association at Kimberly Gardens, fixed neighbors' computers, gave away his tools, carried family through hard seasons, helped friends back onto their feet, and stopped for people stranded along the road.

Generosity was among the defining patterns of Larry's life. When his younger brother Steve was deployed, Larry called to check on Steve's wife, Irene. When his youngest brother George had car trouble, Larry arrived with a U-Haul trailer. When a hurricane left his eldest sister Marcia without power in South Florida, Larry didn't just call to see how she was doing. He mailed her a generator.

Larry is remembered with lasting affection by friends and family from California to Indiana and as far away as India and the Philippines, where his charm, kindness, humor, and instinct to help earned him enduring friendships.

When his health allowed, Larry loved to hike and particularly enjoyed the Holy Jim Trail. In his final years, he undertook an ambitious scholarly project, spending approximately 15 years researching a folklore phenomenon and gathering testimonies and data. He approached the subject with curiosity and open-mindedness. Dr. Roy Wagner, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Virginia, was involved with the book from its inception and wrote its foreword. Larry's late sister, Suzy, edited the book in her final months. The Nermanuh People remains in print, and a signed copy rests today in the family library kept by his son, where his descendants may encounter their grandfather's singular voice in his own words.

Larry is survived by his four children: Loverly Larina (Enrique) Montejano, of San Antonio, Texas, daughter of Larry and his first wife, Michaele Jo "Mykie" Kocher; Tara (Mark) Illgner, of Charlottesville, Virginia, daughter of Larry and Harprit Kaur Sidhu; and Justine, of Lake Forest, California, and Lawson (Tia) of Missouri, his children with his wife, Helen Luzanga Leavell. He is also survived by eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

Larry is also survived by five siblings: Marcia (Franklin) Laning, of North Port, Florida; Shirley (Gregory) McPherson, of Columbus, Ohio; Steven (Irene) Leavell, of Hope Mills, North Carolina; Elisa (Charles) McPherson, of Warsaw, Indiana; and George (Penny) Leavell, of Merced, California.

He was preceded in death by his parents; his sister, Mary Sue "Suzy" Peters; and his first wife, Mykie.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks others to honor Larry as he would have wished: by giving blood and helping someone in need. His legacy is the giving that continues.