By Jock Lauterer
Carrboro Commons Adviser

I always wanted to write a story about Marty Ravellette, but never imagined I’d be writing a footnote to his obituary.

When Marty Ravellette, 67, of Carrboro died Monday, he left behind not only a loving family, but also a veritable fan club of friends who are heartsick over his untimely death. And the fact that his demise came with him at the wheel – a fact of which he was so proud – makes his passing all the more poignant.

At Suttons, Marty Ravellette’s daily morning hangout, the late Carrboro landscaper and motivational speaker liked to read over stories journalism students had written about his life. “This kid got it,” he used to say of a piece he liked.
Jock Lauterer photo

But I’m not here to discuss Marty’s death, but to celebrate his living. For Marty was a voracious life-hog. In the short eight years I was privileged to know him, he became one of my resident “perfessers,” teaching me more than I could ever pass on to him, regardless of his lack of higher education.

Like many others, I discovered Marty at that quintessential Chapel Hill “third place,” Suttons — and watching him chug a cup of coffee using his left foot as deftly as you would use your left hand, I invited him to speak to my fledgling journalism students.

After all, if my kids couldn’t write a story about the trials and eventual triumph of an armless man – then their souls must be made of granite.

Picture this: Marty entering the classroom unannounced, marching up to the whiteboard, grasping a marker with his bare left foot, (while balancing himself effortlessly on his right foot) and reaching up to chest-height with that same left foot and writing his name in perfect cursive.

If the students hadn’t seen it at, now they did: where his short sleeves hung limp, there were no arms.

At this point, I permitted myself the reward of stealing a glance at my glazed-eyed, slack-jawed students.

A barrel-chested mature man in blue coveralls, his graying hair swept back over a sun-darkened forehead, Marty perched on a desk in front of the students. All eyes followed as him as he raised his bare left foot, thoughtfully stroking a salt-and-pepper beard before he launched into his story.

“I was born in 1939 to a sharecropping couple,” he said in a soft baritone voice, as if speaking to a loved one rather than to a class of strangers.

And for the next hour, he would hold my college kids in thrall — this the Millennial generation so hyper-mediated and saturated by electronic flotsam and jetsam that many observers have written them off as mere intellectual chaff. Marty’s simple but eloquent stories of one man’s struggle for equality, understanding, clarity and finally redemption trumped all.

As you must have read by now elsewhere, much of Marty’s life was one of struggle, hard work and loss. But lately he had found love, affirmation, meaningful work and happiness. His “Marty’s Hands-On Landscaping” business became the stuff of legends.

Marty’s stories carried a stunning subtext that students heard loud and clear: if I can make it in this world without arms, kids, then you have nothing to whine about.

Marty had too many stories of quiet heroism to tell in this brief space; so a single story must suffice. One of the best involved a letter Marty received from a man who had been driving to the mountains to commit suicide – until he passed Marty mowing someone’s lawn, pushing his lawnmower with his chest. The sight so shamed and chastened the suicidal man that he jettisoned his self-destructive thoughts and embraced life again, even writing Marty a thank-you letter for saving his life, in which he called Marty his angel.

In fact, he called Marty his “angel with broken wings.”
An angel indeed.