shocked to read about lester on my online Seymour tribune site down here in florida. we lost one of the good ones too soon. lester was a great guy. knew him for many years when I was living up in vallonia. always a smile and friendly greeting. my sympathies to the family. rest well old friend. joe Mitchell saint cloud florida

When I was younger, Lester and I would do a lot of fishing and hunting together. He was famous for saying he wanted to get in the woods early before daylight and then not arrive until about ten o'clock. Sadly, I would always take him at his word and since he was coming by to pick me up, I'd be at the end of the sidewalk waiting on him before daylight. Finally, after a couple hours, I would go back inside the house call him, only to learn he had just gotten out of bed. This happened over and over, but I would not learn. He always let me borrow his tools, and he would show me how to fix my cars or work on my house. He even gave me a part-time job in the evenings so I could supplement my income. We went to car auctions together and bought and resold cars together. Occasionally, we even did side jobs together. For years, we played guitar together in church where we both sat on the front row and tried to pick out the tunes (and drive the organist crazy). I was in the woods in my tree stand one morning and heard him shoot before daylight. I could not understand why he had shot so early. Later, I found out he had accidently shot himself in the leg with his 45 handgun. For a long time, we went to archery competitions together where usually Lester would outshoot me and finish with a better score. When he would get a new bow, I would follow suite and get one like it. He taught me how to clean squirrels and fillet fish. He loved to fish more than me, but one day he bought a Coleman canoe and we went out on a big lake with it. It was like riding a barrel and he got rid of it after a couple days and bought a nice bass boat. My fishing patience was about an hour, but he could sit on that bass boat and fish all day without getting discouraged. I would just put my fishing stuff away and sit back and eat sandwiches and watch him fish until he was ready to go home. It did not matter that he didn't catch anything, he just enjoyed fishing. One summer day, we planned to fish in the creek, but a rain storm came. He wanted to fish anyway, so we stood on the bank in the hard rain and that day we caught 70 nice striped bass, which we took home and cleaned. When I was in my twenties, I was out of a job for several weeks until Lester volunteered to take me to see the owner of the company where he worked; he introduced me to the owner, vouched for me, and the owner gave me a job.I worked for that company for several years and Lester was my foreman much of that time. Lester and Johnny Hodge carried my first deer out of the woods for me, and Lester helped me process it and get it in the freezer. He was one of those men who would readily help others when they had a need and he would not take anything in return. He had a good work ethic and was a regular handy man who could fix most anything. But make no mistake, he would argue with you and tell you what he thought about things and not back down. He'll definitely be missed by his friends and family, but fortunately for us; death is not final, and we will see Lester again.

Please accept our deepest condolences for your family's loss.