Brent Lewis Gephart Sr.'s Obituary
Brent Lewis Gephart, Sr. passed away on April 22 in Florida, surrounded by the family he thanked God for every night.
Brent was born near the Great Miami River—a town so German that kids could order beer with their lunch—and eventually settled in "greater Miami," South Florida.
He started working young. From around age 15 he was selling shoes and working at one of the early Dairy Queens. The hours kept him off the football field, where he might otherwise have starred. When he wasn't working, he and his brother Roy explored local streams in search of fossils—early days of what would become Roy's life as a geologist, untrained at first.
He served in the U.S. Air Force and, while he had volunteered for Vietnam, was sent to Berlin instead. His commanding officer was Timothy Morton, who was later ordained as a priest. Father Morton was one of the two men Brent credited with shaping his character. The other was his grandfather Lewis, a Baptist missionary to Native Americans in Arizona. Both preceded him in death, as did his beloved brother Roy, who became a geologist at the Hanford Site in Washington.
Brent rarely spoke of the close calls in his life—a hunting incident near the Korean DMZ, nearly drowning off the coast of Libya, and the orders to Berlin that may well have spared his life. After his honorable discharge, he worked briefly at a temporary help agency in Detroit before moving into sales, later becoming the principal salesman for Northern Engraving of Sparta, Wisconsin—where he pitched design ideas at General Motor's Design Center. He and Sarah (née Gelatt) were married in 1983. While his career may have been cut short in 1990 by an incurable blood disease, he never stopped contributing.
In Garden City, Michigan, he ran the children's soccer league. At the Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo, he served many terms as condominium president and captained a vessel in the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary. He had the heart of a cowboy: an excellent shot who refused to take game he didn't intend to eat, a passionate fisherman, and a man who lived by his own code of honor.
Brent was everyone's dad. When he married Sarah, he accepted her children as his own from day one and later welcomed every grandchild into the circle without hesitation. He treated every person he met with respect and somehow made each one feel like his best friend or one of his own kids. He was funny in the way that puts people at ease, and thoughtful—both in how carefully he considered others and in how seriously he weighed his decisions. But, once he made up his mind, he was decisive. He was generous with everyone, family and strangers alike, and he had a gift for getting along with almost anyone he met.
To his boys and to Sarah, he had a standing instruction, delivered with a wink: "Don't do anything to make me mad. I don't want to fight with you."
Brent is survived by his beloved wife Sarah and the five children they raised together: his son Brent Gephart and Dr. Tammy Gephart, and their three children; his daughter Michelle Schwartz and her husband Bob, and their three children; his stepson Charles Lavoie and his three children; his stepson Marc Lavoie and Dea Lavoie, and their four children; and his stepdaughter Lisa Lavoie and her husband David Menendez, and their child. He loved them all deeply, and thanked God for every one of them, every single night.
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