Leroy Reeves:
CLASS OF 1982
Ft. Knox High SchoolClass of 1982
Ft. knox, KY
Leroy's Story
I was born and raised an army brat. Mostly raised on or around Fort Bragg, NC and Fort Knox, KY with my mom, dad and brother. I've always been shy and quiet with just a few close friends that I hang out with. I don't know how I've been able to avoid it, but the only person I've ever physically fought with is my brother. Since we have grown up and don't live together anymore, we get along pretty good now. When I graduated High School and started college, my parents got divorced. Due to the drama surrounding that, my first attempt at college did not go so well and I dropped out in the middle of the first quarter. After the dust settled I attempted to go back to college again. This time I got about half way through the first quarter and since we now lived in my moms home town, she decides she better tell me that the dad I was raised with is not my biological father. So I meet my other dad and find out I have a whole new family, which I thought was great. I had always wanted a sister and now I had three half sisters and a whole slew of step and inlaw brothers and sisters. Needless to say, I didn't make it through that quarter of college either. My dad was glad that I was finally able to be a part of his life, but for whatever reason I didn't really feel accepted by the rest of my new family and I'm not one to try to force myself on people, so I went back to college again, which eventually took me out to California where I recieved my bachelor of science degree in factory automation. I came back to Michigan briefly after graduating, but there were no jobs available there, so I moved out to Phoenix, AZ and took a part time job at Intel working in their automation lab. While there I met the representative of one of our suppliers of automation equipment and went to work full time for them. I started out in their automotive division automating a couple factories in Ohio for a year, then was transferred to the cleanroom division and moved to Austin, Texas to sustain equipment our company had installed in a Motorola semiconductor factory there. After about a year there I met the woman that would eventually be my wife. We had a lot of fun together, but we also had some bad times. I loved her more than anyone I'd ever been with before or since. I proposed to her a couple times and she accepted and then backed out. After the third time of being told that she wasn't ready to remarry, I told her that when she was ready she would need to ask me. In 1994 we went to Michigan for a family reunion on my moms side of the family. While there I took her and our kids over to meet my dad. Her first husband was a black man and our children are from that marriage. My dad could not accept that and made some very hurtful racist comments about her and our children. This really hurt my family and really pissed me off. I was laid off from my job in 1995 and took a new job in Phoenix, AZ for a different semiconductor equipment supplier. Making the relocation to Phoenix was rough on her because even though she was able to transfer with the same company, she lost all of her seniority and had to take a night shift position. We hardly ever got to spend much time together since we worked opposite shifts. On March 1st of 1996 she called me and told me her mom and sister were coming to town that weekend and we were getting married on Monday. I was excited that we were finally going to be married. It wasn't the big wedding I had hoped for, but that didn't matter, because the woman I loved finally wanted to marry me. We had a nice wedding by the justice of the peace in his courtroom with her sister and mom and my mom present. We lived in a beautiful house with lots of friends. In June of 96 we went back to Michigan for another family reunion and I decided to give my dad another shot hoping that he would be nicer now that we were married. He made appologies, but also made other racial and unaccepting comments in the same breath. My wife and kids let this bother them enough that they felt unnaccepted by my whole family. My daughters still feel that my entire family in Michigan doesn't like or ...Expand for more
accept them and I haven't been able to get them to go back. I think it was during this trip that I got to see my youngest sister and her husband and oldest daughter again. Unfortunately, we only had a few minutes together that trip and my other sister wasn't available so didn't get to see her. By July only being able to see each other on the weekends was really starting to cause some strain on our relationship. She had cheated on me before in the past and I had forgiven her. In September I started seeing signs that she was cheating on me again. On the 19th she came to me crying and admitted that she was having and affair with her supervisor and that she wanted to die. This was also not the first time she had threatened suicide in our relationship. We talked for a long time. She asked me how long she had to figure out who she wanted to be with and I told her that if she went with him that she couldn't come back. After a while her mood got better and I was not concerned for her life anymore. She got ready and went to work. I didn't know that would be the last time I would see her alive. She had gone off with him up to his parents cabin in the mountains. At around 2am on the 21st a policeman showed up on my doorstep to inform me that she had found a handgun in her boyfriends jeep and had shot herself while sitting on a bench in the back yard, while he and his parents were in the house watching a football game. It took a little over a year to complete the adoption process of our girls. I couldn't change that their father had abaondoned them or what their mother had done, but I could make sure that they had a loving and happy home from then forward. I did my best to provide them with a loving and happy home while teaching them responsibility and independence so that one day when and if they get married, it will be to someone they love, not because they need someone to take care of and provide for them. They are wonderful kids, always taking advanced placement classes in school and getting great grades. They both did a variety of activities, band, chorus, track and softball, but their greatest love was volleyball and they were great at it. Both went on to college with full ride volleyball schollarships. My oldest also had a number of academic scholarship options, but decided to go the athletic scholarship route. She now has her masters degree in journalism and broadcasting with a religious studies path from Arizona State. My youngest spent her first 3 years at Northeastern University in Boston studying International Business with a German path. She finished her degree at Reutlingen University in Germany. She is now preparing to go to Madagascar, Africa for two years with the Peace Corp. My oldest is living and working in New York City. She also played proffesional volleyball for one season in Spain. I am so proud of them. I now live in Austin, Texas again, maintaining some of the equipment that I installed back in the early 90s here. In June of 2008 I went back to Michigan for a number of reasons, to see my grandmother probably for the last time since she is very old and fragile in a nursing home and to attend my cousins daughters wedding. I decided to give my dad another shot, mostly because I wanted to find out how my sisters were doing and try to see them again. Of course it was only me there this time but dad was nice and we got along. The highlight of my trip was getting reunited with my sisters and bonding with them like I had always wanted since we had first met so many years ago. I got to meet my four wonderful nieces. I really regret all the years that were lost because of my anger with my dad. I hope to spend a lot more time with them in the future and that I can be accepted as part of their family as I have always wanted to be. I hope my daughters can get past the hurt from the past and get to know them as well. I hope to be married again some day, but as yet I have not met anyone that I felt I could fall in love with that shared that interest since my wife died. I'm not perfect, but I try to be a good person and take care of those that I love.
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