of Benton, AR

December 30, 1916 - July 12, 2013

Joseph Paul (JP) Leveritt, 96, of Bryant, former physical trainer to President Harry Truman, died July 12 at Little Rock. He was a retired physical therapist and ceramic artist.

Born in Smackover, Leveritt was one of the last surviving members of the 1930s era Rambling Boll Weevils football team at Arkansas A&M at Monticello. The team was the football equivalent of the Harlem Globe Trotters, doing stunt filled exhibition games throughout the United States during the depression. Upon graduation shortly before the war, he joined the Army Medical Corp. While going through training near Washington D.C., his talent for deep massage which he had developed as a trainer/player at Arkansas A&M brought him to the attention of the doctor for Secretary of War Henry Stimson. Stimson had crippling arthritis, making it particularly difficult and time consuming to get up in the morning.

One morning Leveritt received orders to be outside the base gate at 5 a.m. but was not told where he was going. He recalled being picked up by a black sedan and taken to Stimson's home in Georgetown for what became many mornings of literally massaging the Secretary out of bed. He accompanied Stimson to the Potsdam Conference in 1945 where Truman, Churchill and Stalin met at the end of the war. There he had a memorable encounter with General George Patton. Stimson's office was at the end of a long, marble lined corridor in the palatial former home of a Nazi official. Seven marble busts of Adolf Hitler sat on pedestals every 10 feet down the center of the corridor. As Lt. Leveritt was walking down the hall to see Stimson, Patton came striding swiftly out of the Secretary's office. Upon seeing Leveritt, Patton grabbed a bust of Hitler and pitched to the surprised lieutenant who was able to catch it.

"Lt. Leveritt, deliver Hitler's head to Secretary Stimson, compliments of Patton," barked the general. Leveritt did as he was told, delivering Hitler's marble head to an amused Secretary of War.

Leveritt spent the war at Walter Reed Hospital helping rehabilitate wounded soldiers. Due to his work with Stimson, he became acquainted with President Truman and eventually became his private trainer and masseur through his first term. Leveritt had built a steam cabinet in the basement of the White House and would spend time chatting with the president while Truman was encased in the cabinet. Shortly after the second atom bomb was dropped on Japan, Leveritt asked the president how he was able to make such decisions without crumbling under the pressure. Leveritt recalled the president saying, "JP, I just retreat into my own little Shangrala and that's where I can think and make decisions". It was a conversation that stayed with Leveritt throughout his life.

Leveritt returned to Little Rock about 1949 and started a weight lifting gym on Main Street before ultimately becoming the physical director of the downtown YMCA. Eventually he took a similar position with the YMCA in Miami, Fla. but returned in mid sixties where he became a physical therapist at Baptist Hospital where he retired.

Throughout his life Leveritt also worked as a potter, focusing on utilitarian pottery made on the wheel. In Miami his worked appeared in the art galleries at Coconut Grove but he found the demand much more limited when he returned to Little Rock in 1966. He got his start at the old Camden Pottery in the late 1920s and later at the Nyloak Pottery in Benton. He supported himself into his late 80s as a potter and quit only when he could no longer lift the heavy bats for making clay.

He is survived by his companion of many years, Ann Rogers of Bryant, two sons, Bryan Leveritt of Mobile, Ala. and Alan Leveritt of Little Rock, grandchildren Mark Leveritt, Amy Steele , Alan Leveritt, Lila Leveritt, Ethan Leveritt and a number of great grandchildren.

A family memorial service was held July 18 at the Leveritt family farm in North Pulaski County.

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