Mr. John Thomas Levings

John's story begins in South Weymouth, Mass. on April 13, 1949. The first born child of Wendell and Muriel Levings, John spent his early years in Rockland, Mass. He joined the Boy scouts and played little league baseball. He tolerated piano lessons and took ballroom dancing with his sister Carol. He watched after younger sisters Wendie and Diane and his only brother Robert. Summers were spent in Nova Scotia on St. Mary's Bay. Lasting friendships and a love of the Maritimes were formed at this time.

John graduated from Rockland High School where he was president of his sophomore class. He graduated in 1967 and proceeded to Memorial University located in St. Johns Newfoundland. His major was Forestry.

In 1969, John joined the US Coast Guard where he served for six years. During that time, he circumnavigated the globe, served on an ice breaker in Antarctica, and on a lighthouse in Egg Rock, Maine. While his ship was being refitted in New Zealand, John met his future wife Patricia Allison. She accepted his invitation to come to the States to meet his family.

Returning to Nova Scotia after leaving the Coast Guard, John became a licensed mechanic. Marriage to Pat followed in 1974, and soon after came four children: Jason (1975), Allison (1979), Andrea, (1982) and Adam (1984). His first grandchild came along in 1997: Logan and his second due to arrive in October 2008.

For a time, John worked as an engineer on the Digby Neck ferry. But his career took a different direction at the Nova Scotia Registry of Motor Vehicles, where he was active in the revision of the safety rules and regulations for Nova Scotia motorists. His public service career continued at the Nova Scotia Department of Labour and Workforce Development, where he worked as an Occupational Health and Safety Officer.

John enjoyed a rich life, enjoying many friends and a loving family. He was also an avid fisherman, outdoorsman, golfer and gardener. John was active in the organization of the Sissiboo Forestry Management Association as well as a director of the organization. He was a member of the Knights of Columbus, and a communicant of St. Theresa's Church in Marshalltown.

He will be missed by all who knew him.

* Memories written by his best friend Hal Theriault *

During the 60's, summer never truly arrived for us until John and Carol and the rest of the Levings clan pulled into their driveway. We watched for their vehicles like we impatiently anticipated Christmas, they were such a gift to us. They added the exotic to our lives, romance, mystery, and adventure.

How fortunate we are that Wendell and Muriel brought their children here for summer vacations! The bonds those summers created in John led directly to his determination to make Nova Scotia his home.

John was the anchor. Through the tumult of our teen age years, John was the glue that bound us together. Even at 15, we could see the man John was becoming.

John was joy. John was responsibility. John organized for us. After he turned 16, he piloted us around in the red Jeep or the Country Squire like the roads belonged to our youth.

Weekends with his father, duty around the house, shaped the reliable, caring man John became. Even in those early years, we understood we could count on John.

Those tremendous traits guided him into love and marriage, and into fatherhood.

Benny Haight, the proprietor of the ESSO service station across the road from where I grew up introduced John and I when we were about 14 and 15. What impressed me immediately beyond his firm handshake, Wendell inspired I later learned, and his broad Boston accent, was his sincerity, his enthusiasm, and his ability to smile and mean it. In 46 years, that never changed.

John quickly became the centre of our group: Carol, Lillian, Robert, Susan, Wendie, Murray, and me; and often others, Bev, Tommy, Ronnie among them. We lived each moment of those years like they would influence the rotation of the earth! Days and evenings spent at the beach, John choosing just the right stones and building the fire pit, gathering the driftwood fuel, and tending the dancing flames; swimming as the incoming tide warmed itself on the sun baked rocks; so many nights spent dancing to those amazing songs, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, on the turntable at the Levings or the Specht home; twice a week loading up the Jeep for the dances at the Knights of Columbus or Harbour View, John in his red velour shirt and sunglasses, and his cool dancing to the Purple Candle Secret. What joy!

Every Monday when Wendell flew from Yarmouth to Boston for his work week, John and I would fly back to Brighton in the red Country Squire. Wendell left his weekly list of tasks for his son, and John always invariably tackled them on Thursday and Friday mornings in a rush to get them finished preparatory to flying by car back to the Yarmouth airport, Wendell spending his weekends in Brighton, preparing a new list for the following week.

John inherited Wendell's lists. I remember many times in subsequent years, with John and I Christmas shopping in Halifax, or perhaps on a quick errand to Yarmouth: John was burdened with his self-generated list of stops and contacts to make. That was the John we all loved, the one with a social conscience.

John arrived on our doorstep, so we thought, fully formed, a special individual with the exoticness of being American during the heyday of the Beach Boys, California sun, and surf. But, of course, he was not fully formed at all, and it was his experience in Nova Scotia that added much to the man he became. We did not recognize that at the time, of course, because John to us represented so much that was glamorous. One of the things that drew me to John, and became the basis of the great friendship that has endured so long, was his genuineness and sincerity. For all the glamor we thought he represented, John was always, ever, just John, just himself. What mattered most, of course, was that "just John" was a sensitive, caring, open person, one who by being simply himself, opened our eyes and minds.

During the summers of the 60's, many nights either I stayed at John's or he stayed at my home. I think of those endless all-night discussions about everything: girls, friendship, music, Vietnam, and the rest of the world, love!! What an education we gave to each other! What worlds we discovered! What worlds we knew!

Then the real world shattered our secure lives, 1969. I was at university; John had returned to Rockland after leaving Memorial University in St. John's. He received his draft notice. Vietnam loomed. John called and asked me to come to the US and accompany him to the recruiter offices in Boston as he attempted to find which branch of the services would be most unlikely to send him to that dreaded war. Our friendship was deep enough for me to tell my parents I was staying at Acadia during March Break to work on a term paper, while I actually boarded a flight in Halifax to Boston to support my friend in this awful situation. John met me at Logan, and after a night at the cottage in Cape Cod, we headed to Rockland in what turned out to be the worst snowstorm Boston had seen in over 20 years. Nevertheless, we made the rounds, and the Coast Guard, although admitting John might go to Vietnam with them, guaranteed he would be patrolling off the coast, not fighting on land. John joined the Coast Guard. What a vital decision that turned out to be!

The next four years meant experiences unlike anything our lives had shown us before. I ended teaching in Lunenburg; John met the love of his life during a layover of his ship, the "Edisto," in New Zealand, after it broke a rudder on its way to Antarctica. It turned out to be the most fortunate accident a ship could have had for John: Pat came into his life. I had long letters from John erupting with his developing love for Pat. How I relish this time in my friend's life!

For the last section of his mandatory four year stint in the forces, John was stationed at Egg Rock light station off Bar Harbour, Maine. He loved his assignment, because for every two weeks he worked, he had one off, so he was able to load that viciously green VW Beetle with cheap Ripple wine and come to Brighton. I remember vividly the night he parked that car in his family's field, at the edge of the bank over St. Mary's bay; we sat on the fenders and passed the Ripple back and forth, lightening zigzagging over Digby Neck and Black Sabbath booming from a stereo with a sound bigger than the Bug! What fun we had!!

The American Coast Guard did not welcome visitors to Egg Rock, but John was determined I would spend a week to experience the life he led on that barren hump. So, after one of his weeks off, I accompanied him to Maine; John had to report to the Base at Southwest Harbour, so I was to camp in the woods for the night and take a tour boat on a harbour tour the next day, where John would pluck me from the tour boat in his dingy and smuggle me on Egg Rock. John was setting my tent up when a State Trooper happened along and very politely informed us there was no rough camping allowed, so John drove us to the nearest campground and secured my tent for the night. The next morning, I hitchhiked into Bar Harbour. On the radio during our trip to Maine, the song we heard most often was Rod Stewart's "Maggie May", brand new and wonderful. I had enough time before I bought a ticket on one of the tour boats to purchase the just released album, "Every Picture Tells a Story." It became the sound track of that week on Egg Rock, and for many weeks afterward. On Egg Rock, the only time Rod Stewart was off the turntable was when he was replaced by the Beatles.

What a week it was! As an illegal alien, John found a hiding place for me under the floor in case the Coast Guard came for one of their irregular check-up visits. Once, in a flurry of panic at an approaching boat, I spent a horrifying 20 minutes in that black cell; as usual, John was my rescuer. John took me for rows around the island; he built bon fires on the edge of the rocks; he made breakfast every morning. We once again talked our nights away discovering who we were and how and where we fit in the world.

At the end of the week, John packed me a survival rainproof plastic bread bag for my hitch hike back to Canada and Brighton, from toilet paper to cheese and crackers. I anticipated and wanted a week long trek to the Saint John ferry. It took me half a day! But I valued those unused toilet rolls, the cheese and sandwiches as if they were gold, because my best friend had prepared them for me. That was my ultimate great hippie adventure: a week on a barren rock listening to Rod Stewart, and two drivers to get back to the ferry to Digby! It must have been my honest Nova Scotian face!

And we grew up. Years past. John married Pat; Jason came along; and then, Allison, Andrea, and Adam. My love for John and Pat grew. And my admiration for John expanded. He displayed ambition, moving ever upward in his career, wisely investing in valuable land. We continued, when the opportunity came along, in short and long conversations, to examine our values and opinions, eventually about politics. John had a vibrant belief in giving back to the community and those who had helped him over the years, but especially during his struggle to emigrate to Canada. He was, as always, intensely loyal, intensely patriotic. We had a ball disagreeing, and sometimes agreeing, about political; but through it all, we valued and respected each other's opinion.

Many were the Christmas Eves when I watched, and sometimes helped, John and Pat put together complicated toys. It was a welcomed ritual to spend part of Christmas Eve in the Levings home. John and I loved Christmas, and particularly its music; we had an unrecognized but nevertheless real competition to find the best Christmas recording each year. Typical of John, the years he found the one, it appeared under my tree.

In these later years, as we both neared our sixth decade, our talks continued to be as intense as they were when we were 16. Once John had his last position, it meant often he ended his working days at his office in Digby; I was happy when he had the time to stop by my house, share a couple of drinks and have an inspiring discussion. There was never a less than genuine and enlightening discussion, and often our talks have been astounding and life-changing. ( At my home, John never drank enough to be impaired. He always went home fresh, and fully aware ).

During John's long illness and suffering, our friendship continued to develop. We discussed the overwhelming horror of what was happening to his body; we spoke of what a wonderful family he has; we sometimes approached the frightening aspects of what he was living; we repeatedly said we loved each other. What a friend!

I am forever grateful to Muriel and Wendell for giving us John as the caring, marvelous man he was. I thank them. I also thank the wonderful people of our youth, named earlier, for giving John the opportunity to be himself and to develop into the amazing , caring, giving man he became.

And, most of all, I thank Pat and their wonderful children for giving my best friend the reasons he needed to live.