Community mourns loss of Councilmember Lovell

Life can change so quickly.

Maybe one day your son is a happy, healthy middle school student with a pain in his leg. The next day, the doctor says its bone cancer.

Then there is the local man who needed a lung transplant, but whose miraculous new set of lungs seems an empty gift of life without his wife at his side. She died suddenly of a brain tumor months before a transplant saved his life.

On Sunday, life changed quickly for the Lovell family, which is no stranger to heartache. They lost a son earlier this year and Sunday, a tragic accident claimed the life of patriarch and Wasilla City Councilmember Steve Lovell, 56.

Lovell was elected to the council Oct. 2, 2012, when he garnered 36 more votes than incumbent Taffina Katkus to claim Seat A.

A few days after that night, on Oct. 5, 2012, Councilman Lovell’s 30-year-old son went missing after walking away from a party off McLeod Road in Palmer.

The councilman said his son’s longstanding drug habit was the reason why the family searched solo for Shanon for three months before asking for the public’s help to locate him.

The young man’s body was recovered in May in a lake off Lakeshore Loop in the area where he was last seen alive.

Since his son’s death, Councilman Lovell had been raising his son’s two children — a 13-year-old and an infant. But from this day forward, those children will live without their father and their grandfather.

Before Steve Lovell’s tragic death, the family had planned a celebration of life for Shanon this weekend. In fact, Shanon’s mother and brother are on their way north now.

Would that no one would be asked to endure so much loss. If it were within our power, we would stay the hand of fate and spare the Lovell family this mountain of grief.

If there is a silver lining in all of this, it may be that the Lovell family is part of our small, caring community and we are tenacious about caring for our own. Even now, we know the Lovells’ many friends and family members are encircling them with their love and helping them to soldier on from beneath this new burden.

The highest, best use of any person is to offer mercy to another person. If the universe offers you an opportunity to provide mercy, we suggest you grab it with both hands. After all, we are only here to help each other.

There also is a sad reminder here about how we should treat each other. This family’s tragic year is well known in our community. But there are many others among us straining beneath loads of worry and care similarly too heavy to carry alone, and yet somehow they do.

Above the door in Joe and Norma Delia’s Skwentna cabin hangs a sign that was once, Joe says, the unwritten rule of the Last Frontier: “Treat everyone as if they are an angel. For many have entertained angels unaware.”