When I first met Rhoda Lovewell at a family reunion in 2005, I was startled by how much she resembled certain members of my family when she turned her head just so. In the picture on the left, the one where she seems to be regarding my camera with a mixture of suspicion and disapproval, there’s a hint of my mother, though the piercing glance is really just the Lovewell physiognomy at work. It made both women hard to read, so you just stopped trying.
In the center picture I’m sure she’s trying to beam a smile just as convincing as those of Carolyn and Pat, the younger ladies on either side. The camera just doesn’t see it. What it sees is a teacher who might be sorting out a thorny algebra problem in her head. Again, I’m reminded that my mother could seem to be in the pit of despair even when she was actually having the time of her life.
We should also keep in mind that despite her youthful appearance, thanks to a pair of second marriages in her family tree, Rhoda was two generations closer to those old pioneers who never smiled in photographs. Yet in spite of the fact that I never snapped a picture of her with a big grin on her face, you may rest assured that Rhoda Lovewell was interesting, interested in a great many things, especially history, and was tremendous fun to be around.
She could hardly help being drawn to history, particularly family history, being the youngest grandchild of Kansas pioneer Thomas Lovewell, a man born over two hundred years ago just as the Santa Fe Trail was being surveyed and while the Oregon Trail was still a pipe dream. In the 1940’s her father Stephen Lovewell, who was sixty-three when Rhoda was born, tried to piece together a coherent account of his father’s ramblings in the American West. Rhoda apparently had a hand in compiling some of the information for Gloria Lovewell’s original edition of The Lovewell Family published in 1978. I know she collected data from cousins who lived nearby and later showed them sections of the work in progress.
After attending my first reunion at Lovewell State Park in 2005 with my son Jonathan, I managed to drop in on a few more while Rhoda was still serving as master of ceremonies. My last meeting with her was during Covid lockdown, when we rendezvoused in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel in the K.C. area, where I transferred cartons of papers and photos from the trunk of her car to mine. Then we had what we both understood might be our final hug. Rhoda was in the middle of a move further east to bring her closer to children and grandkids. We indulged in a few epic phone calls in the years since then to bring each other up to date on the latest discoveries.
According to her personal beliefs, Rhoda shed her last tether to this world a few nights ago and slipped away on a grand cosmic adventure. She had studied diligently and worked hard all her life, serving as a nurse in eleven states including Alaska, New Mexico, Louisiana and Florida. After retirement she felt compelled to undertake a staggeringly massive update to the story of her family, The Lovewell Family Revisited. To that end she conducted countless interviews, wrote letters and dispatched emails to far-flung relatives, visited courthouses and historical sites, and could often be seen banging away at a keyboard in a corner of the room during spare moments at those family reunions.
However, she was also a woman who knew how to have fun even if she didn’t always look like she was having fun. So I hope she has a real blast.
And I do wish she could keep in touch.