Obituaries

Loretta Annette Kleve

Photo of Loretta Annette Kleve
LORETTA ANNETTE KLEVE, age 71, died on April 7, 2013, after fighting metastatic melanoma for over a year. A red-headed firecracker, Loretta was born in San Diego, Calif., on Sept. 2, 1941, the second of five Welsh-Italian children. Her parents were Navy officer Jerals Rexter Griffin and Margarita (Margy) Loretta Picchiarello, a former fashion model from Brooklyn. Because of her father's Navy career, Loretta moved between several states in her youth, but Arkansas was the place she called home. She graduated from Marshall High School in 1959. Her tenacity helped her work her way through the College of the Ozarks, and after transferring to Drury College in Springfield, Mo., she received a B.S. in Biology and Botany in 1963. Soon after graduation, she heeded President Kennedy's call for Americans to serve their country and joined the Peace Corps. From 1963 to 1968, she lived in Freetown, Sierra Leone in West Africa, where she taught physical education and biology in the local language of Krio. She met and married Robert Ross, Portmaster of Freetown, and had her first child, Jennifer Margaret Ann. Returning to the U.S. as a single parent, she and her daughter settled in Galveston, Texas, where her love of the natural world led her to work first as a medical technician at John Sealy Hospital, then as a chief chemist for the city of Galveston. Biking along the beach to her job as a marine biologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), she helped pioneer the techniques used today to raise shrimp in captivity. In Galveston she met and married Maurice Kleve, a cell biologist. The family eventually moved back to Arkansas, where Loretta had her second child, Annette (Annie) before entering the Bowen School of Law in Little Rock in 1981. Loretta earned her juris doctorate in 1985 and went to work for the Social Security Administration as an attorney advisor. She rose to the position of Senior Attorney in the Office of Disability Adjudication Review (ODAR), working over 30 years with SSA. When she wasn't sweating at the gym or swinging hard at the driving range, Loretta was a faithful parishioner at Christ the King Catholic Church in Little Rock, and donated to Meals on Wheels, the National Wildlife Federation, and Friends of Sierra Leone. In 2008, she fulfilled a lifelong dream of visiting Italy with her sister. She maintained high standards for herself and others; those who knew her well knew her as a fierce, loyal friend. She is survived by her husband, Maurice Kleve; two brothers, Rex Griffin (Pamela) and Jim Griffin (Diane); a sister, Geraldine Hughey (David); two children: Jennifer Meyer (Bill), of Lake Bluff, Ill., and Annette Kleve, of Little Rock, Ark.; and two cherished grandchildren: Will Meyer and Rosie Meyer.

Published April 14, 2013

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