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the company shop and office, where Stacy Williams works with clan matriarch Suzye. Kelly’s wife Kim owns Southern Bell Originals, which makes printed t-shirts (www.followyourroots apparel.com/). Greg’s brother Charles is in marketing and manages Southern Coffee Co. “The good Lord has blessed us in a mighty way with a good crew, folks that will show up to work,” Greg says. The cousins are thankful
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for that. “If one of these guys here doesn’t show up for work, you need to check the hospital or the morgue because they will be in one of the two. Kelly and I can leave our crews by themselves and they will still do their jobs; we don’t have to worry about them.” On Greg’s crew, Brad Liles is cutter man, Shone Mulkey drives the 535D skidder and Sherman Brown runs the 595 loader; Greg’s other son Bo runs the 495. On
Kelly’s crew, Logan Carter mans the Prentice, Bobby Jo Wooten (another family cousin) drives the 545D skidder and Ty Ward runs the cutter. Loader man Logan is engaged to Kelly’s daughter Karlie, which will make him stepdad to her kids KJ and Andi Grace, two of Kelly’s grandkids. Kelly and Kim’s other daughter Kenidy is a dental assistant, while their other son Klint and his wife Elizabeth have a baby girl,
SEPTEMBER 2021 l Southern Loggin’ Times
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Mary Vivian, just over a year old. Greg also has grandkids: grandson Gatlin McGregor, 11; granddaughter Charlie Moore; and the newest addition, Brandon’s son Dakota Charles Lovorn, named for both Greg’s father and grandfather.
Giving Back The Lovorn family contributes back to their local community in a number of ways, with several members working in the schools. For his part, Greg does fundraising benefits to help pay medical costs for people with cancer and other conditions. He cooks and auctions off barbecue pork, with the meat donated by some of his friends. This service started with his father-in-law, Charles Lee McGregor, who was a brick mason. McGregor did it the first time for a young neighbor boy who was born with a heart problem; it grew from there. “He always used to say, we do it because the next one might be for us,” Greg recounts. For McGregor, that turned out to be true eventually. There was an auction to benefit him when he got sick before he died from stage IV pancreatic cancer in 2009. Greg then took over and carried on the legacy. They do it whenever people who need help ask for it, several times a year. “Sometimes it seems like it’s every week,” Greg says; he has two scheduled in September, back to back. “If folks get sick, we do it at no charge to help them with medical expenses and hospital bills while they are going through a trying time.” Though it hasn’t affected their business much, several of the Lovorns have had Covid-19. Kelly had it the worst; he spent a week in the hospital last October. “I passed out at home,” he says. He went to the local ER and learned he had pneumonia in both lungs. He was admitted to St. Dominic’s at Jackson. “The first day or two it was kind of scary,” Kelly admits. “But after that I saw it was all going to be ok.” He didn’t require a ventilator but they did put him on oxygen when they released him. He came back to work immediately after coming home, but could only work partial days for about three more weeks before he would give out. More than 10 months later, he says he is still not quite 100% back to normal, but he is close. Looking to their future plans, the Lovorns just hope to keep going like they are going. “If the good Lord lets us stay healthy, we’ll keep working,” Greg says. “Maybe the grandkids will take it SLT over one day.”
