Richard Leroy Lennert

Richard Lennert was a wonderful father but more than that he was a wonderful man. He was born and raised in cold Michigan in a family of 6 kids. As one of the older children, he learned responsibility at a young age and knew how to take care of his younger siblings while helping out at the family store after school. After graduating high school, he rode his motorcycle to CA to start his adult life. While at his older brother's house, he met the first love of his life. With her, he raised a family of 3 kids, two boys and a baby girl.

Times were hard and he found ways to stretch money as far as it could go for the family, including working almost 7 days a week sometimes, but he always had time to go on hiking/camping trips with his family, teaching his kids to ski on early Sunday mornings, roller skating in the park, biking, and taking walks around the neighborhood as a family. Many years later, after he divorced, he met another wonderful woman who was also his best friend for the remainder of his life, whom he married and they had a baby girl. He loved all of his kids tremendously, even if it might have been harder at times to express it.

Richard eventually bought a house and lived in that house for almost 30 years, during which time he made friends with everyone in his cul-de-sac. Everyone knew they could count on him to watch what was going on in the neighborhood and knew every February they would receive bags of organic oranges from his backyard tree. He watched his neighbor's families grow, the kids get older and move away to have their own families and come back for visits. They knew they would always be able to see him stand at his front door and clap for them and their games, wave hi to everyone, and offer words of encouragement. Richard was a great skier, took great pride in his backyard and house doing most work himself, an avid pro-football fan, and pretty good bar-b-quer as well.

He will be missed by many, but especially his children and grandchildren, who loved him very, very much. God may have taken him, but we will see him again one day.