LeRoy Perry Ades

Funeral services for LeRoy Perry Ades, 94, will be held on Sunday, December 7, 2025, at 3:00 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 406 Shirley St., DeRidder, Louisiana, with visitation beginning one hour prior. Officiating the service will be Rev. Laraine Waughtal. A burial service will take place on Sunday, December 14, 2025, at 2:00 p.m. at Jackson City Cemetery, 134 Oak St., Jackson, Georgia.

Born in Upland, California on July 3, 1931, to Floyd and Ora Belle Hamilton Ades, LeRoy slipped into this world exactly seventeen hours short of being a Fourth of July firecracker. He grew up in Southern California and Oregon, graduating from Ashland High School in Oregon before achieving his “life’s ambition” of attending the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. After his 1953 West Point graduation, he completed Ranger school at Fort Benning, Georgia, and soon found himself attracted to a Georgia peach, Marcia Mallet, then a student at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. The Army had other plans, though, and shipped him off to West Germany during the tail end of the Allied occupation following World War II. Not to be deterred, he made sure their paths crossed again when that Georgia peach took a post-graduation tour of Europe. LeRoy and Marcia began their seventy-one-year marriage in Zirndorf, Germany, and Marcia didn’t return to Georgia to teach school.

LeRoy’s twenty-year Army career included stops in Munich, Germany, where daughter, Leah was born; Army language school in Monterrey, California, where he learned Arabic and gained daughter, Elaine; two tours in Saudi Arabia; Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for a Master’s Degree and son, Mark; three tours at Fort Polk, Louisiana; and a tour in Vietnam, where he oversaw the construction of the airfield at LZ Stud, a key component in the relief of Khe Sanh. Over the years he wrote down many of his life stories, preserved in his recently published book, “Recollections of a Life Well Lived.”

He retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1973. Although wife Marcia instructed him not to buy a house when he was first sent to Fort Polk in 1966, they soon settled into life in DeRidder, Louisiana, where the family continued to live in that house he wasn’t supposed to buy. Active members of First United Methodist Church of DeRidder, LeRoy even served as a delegate to the World Methodist Conference in Great Britain. Through the years, he served as Executive Director of the local Chamber of Commerce, volunteered at the War Memorial Civic Center, and was an engaging speaker who enjoyed sharing his experiences with local civic groups. He and Marcia relished their cross-country travels and visits to spoil their grandchildren.

LeRoy is survived by his devoted wife of seventy-one years, Marcia Mallet Ades, of DeRidder, Louisiana; daughter, Leah Ades Cooper and husband, Robert of Jefferson, Texas; daughter, Elaine Ades Clark and husband, Rob of Hayward, California; daughter-in-law, Josephine “Josie” Ferrell Ades of Little Rock, Arkansas; grandchildren, Emily Clark Machtinger (Noah), Megan Cooper (Huxley Seidman), Laura Clark Perri (Nik), Rebecca Cooper (Nathaniel Novak), Lizzie Clark Farmer (Adam), and Matthew Ferrell (Madison); great-grandchildren, Hattie and Anna Machtinger, Vincent and Kira Seidman, Evie Perri, and Duncan Ferrell; and brothers, Lloyd, Larry, and Bill Ades.

LeRoy was preceded in death by his son, Mark Mallet Ades, father, Floyd Russell Ades, mother, Ora Belle Hamilton Ades Dickerson, brother, Charles “Chuck” Ray Ades, brother, Gerald “Jerry” Ades and sister-in-law, Connie, sister, Barbara Maraviov, and foster parents, Nina and Herbert Menefee.

The family is exceedingly grateful to the dedicated and loving caregivers of Companion Care. Because of their commitment to providing around-the-clock care tailored to his changing needs, LeRoy was able to move back home from the nursing home and live almost five more years in that house he bought back in 1966, dying peacefully at home after his courageous battle with Parkinson’s Disease.

Services and care were provided to the family by Kilpatrick’s Rose-Neath Funeral Home in Many, Louisiana.