"Put on an old pair of shoes, and we'll go walking down the alley..." That's one of the early songs that Uncle Leroy used to sing in a barbershop quartet nearly fifty years ago. I will never forget it, nor will I forget the day I first saw him in the summer of 1975. Krissie and I abandoned our game of "Little House on the Prairie" and quickly ran to the window of the shed we were playing in. We had heard a car pull into the driveway next to Grandmom's trailer. From a distance, we could see a man get out of the car with a baby in his arms. The man was our uncle - Leroy Oscar Scheffler, Jr. He was twenty-eight years old at the time. Today I remember him on the day of his birth.
Uncle Leroy's childhood was rough. His biological father was an alcoholic who abused his mother, but eventually his mother became remarried to a wonderful man named Gus Filandino. Uncle Leroy has quite a few siblings but I'm not sure which ones are Schefflers and which ones are Filandinos. The important thing is that they all became one big, happy family.
Uncle Leroy started hanging out with Aunt Claire when he was fifteen. She was actually the one who first pursued their friendship. She said that she went to his house to ask him to go to an event with her and found him in the middle of trying on a Halloween costume. He said that he would be glad to accompany her "As soon as I get out of this costume". A few years later, they were married. In the meantime, Uncle Leroy played "Rolf" in a high school production of "The Sound of Music." After high school, he went into the service. He and Aunt Claire lived on the base where he was stationed in Arizona. (This business of going into the service and being stationed in Arizona is something that runs in the family). At some point he and Aunt Claire both got teaching degrees and lived in Dover, Delaware. They had a lot of difficulty becoming parents, but they finally had a daughter in 1974. They named her Annette, after a famous singer named Annette Funicello.
They came to New Ringgold in 1975 to help Grandmom tear down a huge barn and build a house in place of it. While Uncle Leroy was working on the house, he, Aunt Claire and the baby lived with Grandmom and Grandpop in a trailer. Sometimes Uncle Leroy's brother, Gary, came up to help. That first year was one of hardship for them. Uncle Leroy got a job working for a company called Miracle Maid, selling pots and pans. The products were remarkable. For decades Mom cooked chicken outside on an appliance she bought from Uncle Leroy.
After the house was finished, they all moved in and shared it. For a while, Aunt Claire and Uncle Leroy stayed in the upstairs and Grandmom and Grandpop lived downstairs. Before we knew it, Uncle Leroy was working on his own house which he and Aunt Claire moved into. Over the years, that house sheltered three children as they grew: his daughter, granddaughter and great grandson.
Uncle Leroy joined a local Barbershop singing group and enjoyed performing with them so much that it became a lifetime thing. A few times a year he would be in a show that we would all go to see. His most memorable appearance was during a Christmas show when he dressed up in a onesie and walked out on stage as the New Years baby after "Auld Lang Syne". For a short time he took Scott, who loved to sing, under his wing. Scott was the only teenager in the group which was largely made up of older men. Uncle Leroy spent some time working as a high school electronics teacher and moved on to start his own computer business. My first computer came from Uncle Leroy. It was actually a gift from Mom for my college graduation but she got it through Uncle Leroy. Uncle Leroy actually gave the computer a name - Hal. Most of the papers for my graduate courses were completed on Hal.
One of Uncle Leroy's most memorable characteristics was his sense of humor. If someone asked him what time it was he would say, "The same time it was yesterday at this time only a day later." One time when he was in back of us driving home, he started tailgating us just to be funny. It was dark so we couldn't see who was behind us. Thinking that it was just some scoundrel trying to be ignorant, Al gave him "the finger" through the back window. As soon as we pulled into the driveway, Dad realized what was going on. "Oh, that's Leroy!" He said. Everyone laughed as we got out of the car, including Uncle Leroy who never expected to receive that kind of a hand gesture from Al.
The characteristic that he was best known for, though, was his willingness to jump in and help others in any way that he could, even on a moment's notice. I started calling him for help in high school when I was having trouble with math problems. Then I called him when I was having problems with the computer, and after Dad died I called him when I was having problems with the car. One time I left this really long message on his answering machine describing all the sounds I was hearing in the engine. The message was so long that the machine beeped off before I was finished speaking. Al joked with me saying, "Uncle Leroy was probably sitting behind the machine yelling, "BEEP!" However, we soon saw him walking up to look at the car.
As the years went on, the problems that Uncle Leroy was asked to help with became more and more serious. He missed a night of singing to fix a pipe of Mom's that had burst. He freed my car when it got stuck in the snow in a sideways position coming down the little hill above the driveway. He had to lift the car to do it and I was so afraid that he would hurt himself. Uncle Leroy was the only one who could get Mom off the stairs in 2013 when she was standing there with a broken leg waiting for the ambulance to come. Even in a crisis he never lost his sense of humor. "Put your arms around my neck" he said, while trying to lift her. When she did that he then said, "We've got to stop meeting like this." When she was finally sitting in a chair he said, "Give her some Jack Daniels. That will make her feel better."
Uncle Leroy left this world four years ago, but the memories that he left with us are countless. When we think of him, our hearts will always be filled with laughter, gratitude and awe for a man with so many talents. "We'll find the dreams left behind in all the old, familiar places as we mend the broken laces of an old pair of shoes - old pair of sho-oes!"
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