Gary Pettus — plumber helped disaster victims

Wearing an oldtimey outfit of suspenders, tan pants and an old felt hat, Gary Pettus told a group of teenagers about being an American pioneer in the 1800s.

“One night it got so cold,” Pettus said, according to a friend, Don Cole, “that the tent froze to my hair. The trail boss came by and jerked the tent up to tell us it was time to get up.”

He removed his felt hat. “Look!” he cried. Pettus was bald.

Just as he threw himself into disaster relief work and building his plumbing business, Pettus relished leading pioneer treks — camping trips designed to teach young members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints about the flight of early Mormons from persecution.

When he wasn’t dressing up, Pettus was happy to lug portable toilets from one campsite to another. If there were no roads, he and Cole built makeshift toilets themselves, using tarps and poles and post hole diggers.

Pettus died on Sept. 5 after spending six weeks on a ventilator in North Alabama Medical Center in Florence, Ala. He was 70. The cause was COVID19, his wife, Cheryl Pettus, said.

Gary Wayne Pettus was born on Jan. 20, 1950, in Florence and grew up in a rural area nearby. His father, Wiley Edward Pettus, worked as a hog and chicken farmer and sold sweet potato cuttings. His mother, Reba Gladys ( Killen) Pettus, pitched in with farm work. She took her seven sons into the cotton fields, left early to prepare lunch, and then went back to work with her boys.

Pettus graduated from Rogers High School in Florence in 1968 and married Vicki Poss. In the late 1970s, missionaries knocked on their door and gave Pettus the Book of Mormon. He found time to read it during breaks at his maintenance job at a Ford Motor Co. plant in Sheffield, Ala. Within months, Pettus converted.

The Ford plant closed in 1983. Pettus created his own business, Pettus Plumbing and Piping. His home and pickup truck were his office, and he regularly got up to work at 4 a. m.

Pettus and Vicki Pettus had six children; Vicki Pettus died in 1997 of kidney disease. A year later, Pettus married Cheryl Rooks.

In addition to her, Pettus is survived by two brothers, Jimmie Daniel Pettus and Tommy Dale Pettus Sr.; three daughters, Amber Walker, Amy Elliott and Johanna Brown; three sons, Noble Pettus, Marion Pettus and Joshua Pettus; 18 grandchildren; and one greatgrandchild.

Pettus in 2003 sold his company, which had grown to employ more than 100 people and gained major corporate clients, such as Walmart.

In semiretirement,

Pettus found more time for church activities. It is hard to keep track of the many duties he performed: senior missionary, president at three levels of the local church’s hierarchy, bishop, high councilor, president of Sunday school.

demonstrations.

In October 2002, Platte, Gilbert and one other Dominican nun, the late Sister Jackie Hudson, poured their own blood on a Minuteman III missile loaded with a 20kiloton nuclear bomb in Weld County, Colo. It was one of 49 hightrigger nuclear weapons stored in the state. Their action symbolized taking it offline.

They were convicted of sabotage and received harsh sentences: 41 months for Platte, 33 for Gilbert and 30 for Hudson.

In September 2000, the three were arrested for civil disobedience at

Courtesy Pettus family Gary Pettus built a plumbing business and volunteered his skills for disaster relief.