Teddy “Ted” Faye Oliver’s daughters, Sonya Lucarelli and Amanda Costoulas, said their father quit his job as a truck driver in the early 1980s to keep them and their brother, Teddy Jr., from going into foster care in Florida.
“He fought to get custody of three children when he was just a 25-year-old man, and took responsibility to raise us when that was unheard of — he wanted his kids with him,” Amanda said. “He never remarried, and raised us by himself the best that he could. He taught us the meaning of hard work and love and what family meant.
“Daddy would always say, ‘We don’t have much, but we have each other, we’re together. We may not be rich financially, but we’re rich in love.’”
Sonya noted the system back then “didn’t see fit to give a man food stamps or anything like that … but we made our family work.”
“We grew up in an 18-foot camper trailer, and even though that trailer was small, it was big with love,” she echoed. “We wore secondhand clothes from yard sales, but every Friday when he would get off from work he would get three Happy Meals and we looked forward to that so much.
“Family meant everything to him, and that’s why he never left Ellijay. He never met a stranger, and was always there if you needed help — you could always count on him no matter what.”
They were asked about favorite family activities growing up.
“We went camping, fishing, took walks on a Sunday,” Amanda shared. “We’d go down to River Park and he’d walk around and talk to everybody. We’d get those cheap hot dogs and have cookouts down there at the pavilion. He was with us all the time. He didn’t have a lot of money, but he did things with us. A lot of parents don’t do that. He had the time and the patience, and he wanted to be with us.”
Sonya remembered her father loved to sing karaoke, and that Amanda had a penchant for pulling pranks on him.
“One day Dad calls me and he’s just so excited because he thought this music producer was going to come out and watch him do karaoke,” Sonya said with a laugh. “Amanda really had him believing that. Because my Dad loved to sing, but he couldn’t carry a tune in a gourd!”
Amanda said her father was a caregiver.
“He took care of his brother, he took care of his mom, even getting a job at the nursing home just so he could be with his mother when she was up there,” she said. “Everybody knew him, and everybody loved him. He was little in size, but big in personality. It is devastating what happened to him. He was a kid at heart, and has made a huge difference in his grandchildren’s lives.”
Melissa Oliver, the husband of Ted Oliver’s nephew, Lee Oliver of Ellijay, said he “loved to tell stories.”
“He loved to wear a cowboy hat and cowboy boots, and was very patriotic,” she said. “He was just a lovely man, in general, always happy and always had something funny to tell you. He liked to joke and was a simple man. He was loved by a lot of people here in the county, and loved by his family and friends.”