BY ASHLEY SZATALA
Kevin Loveday, TENNESSEE TECH 1987, makes it a personal mission that no child sleeps on the floor in his community
Kevin Loveday, TENNESSEE TECH 1987, still gets chills when he thinks about watching the video that introduced him to Sleep in Heavenly Peace. In the Facebook Watch series “Returning the Favor,” TV host Mike Rowe profiles people who are giving back to their communities, and the second season featured the national nonprofit organization that builds and delivers beds to children without one.
“It grabbed my heart,” Loveday says of the video recommended to him by a friend who volunteers with her local Sleep in Heavenly Peace chapter. “My whole life I’ve never really felt called to do anything like this. I am a Christian and I do good things, but this was like, ‘You need to go do something.’”
It also came at the right moment in Loveday’s life. He was chief financial officer for Coker Tire Company in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and in November 2018 the company was sold to a private equity group. It was a stressful period for Loveday, and around that time two Fraternity brothers also died, prompting Loveday to question the meaning of his work and actions. He began some volunteer work with the Chattanooga Sleep in Heavenly Peace chapter and retired from Coker Tire in July 2019.
Loveday and his wife moved to Pensacola, Florida, and started the Pensacola Sleep in Heavenly Peace chapter in November 2019. To date, the chapter has built and delivered about 600 beds to children in need. For his work leading the local chapter and organizing bed builds, Loveday has been named this quarter’s Mark V. Anderson Character-in-ActionTM Leadership Award recipient.
MAKING A LONG-TERM IMPACT
Sleep in Heavenly Peace estimates that about 3 percent of children in the United States do not have a bed and are sleeping on the floor, a couch or somewhere else. Its motto is, “No kid sleeps on the floor in our town,” and it’s a challenge Loveday takes seriously. To combat bedlessness, a term the organization has coined, volunteers participate in bed builds where they form assembly lines to craft the various parts of a wooden twin bed. No experience in woodworking or building is required. People refer a family or apply themselves to receive a bed on the organization’s website, shpbeds.org, and then volunteers remove the requested beds from storage and assemble them in the home. Sleep in Heavenly Peace also provides the mattress, pillow and bedding.
Once Loveday moved to Pensacola, it took some time to build traction for a new Sleep in Heavenly Peace chapter there.
“If we had been in Chattanooga, we could have called 10 people and raised $10,000 and had 100 people show up [for a bed build]. We knew everybody there,” Loveday recalls. “But God said, ‘Nope, I’m going to send you somewhere where it’s all [Loveday working on his own from the ground up].’”
As Loveday was meeting new people in his community, he was spreading the word about Sleep in Heavenly Peace. His neighbor, Michael Martin, a local business owner, recalls hearing from Loveday of the organization and bedlessness for the first time. Loveday had asked him and his business to sponsor the new chapter and help get it started, and the idea that children slept on the floor was heartbreaking to Martin. Today he is co-chapter president.
“If kids can’t sleep well, they’re not going to do well in school,” he says. “We really try to make an impact for the long term for these children.”
Lowe’s Home Improvement assisted, and continues to assist, both locally and nationally as a Sleep in Heavenly Peace major corporate sponsor, with that initial bed build in November 2019 by providing products, tools, assembly help and its parking lot for the bed build. Now that the chapter is more established, 80 volunteers can build 40 beds in about two and a half hours, Loveday says. The reaction of the children receiving their own bed is heartwarming to the volunteers.
“The younger kids are unbridled,” Loveday says. “We’ve seen everything from sleeping on a pile of clothes to sleeping in a utility room on a damp concrete floor with nothing but a sheet. So many times we leave more blessed than the children are.”
Adds Martin: “These kids will still be sleeping in these beds five, eight, 10, 15 years from now. This isn’t something that you give and a week later they forget about it. Even though we are on track to deliver 600 beds, there are still probably a thousand beds, at least, that we need to get built and delivered. And we can only do that with volunteers.”
LEAVING THE CHAPTER IN GOOD HANDS
Current co-chapter presidents Martin and Steve Barroga, a lumber testing manager who also donates wood to the chapter after his employer finishes inspecting softwood lumber for strength and quality, agree that the chapter is successful due to the passion Loveday has for the organization’s mission.
"We’ve seen everything from sleeping on a pile of clothes to sleeping in a utility room on a damp concrete floor with nothing but a sheet. So many times we leave more blessed than the children are."
Kevin Loveday
“Kevin’s passion brought it here to Pensacola. He’s all in,” Barroga says. “He’s always talking of Sleep in Heavenly Peace, always touting the volunteers, all the donations and everything. And he doesn’t take any of the credit [for the chapter’s success].”
Martin describes Loveday as “selfless,” “community-minded” and “motivating.”
Both are already feeling the loss of Loveday, who at the end of 2022 was preparing to move back to Tennessee. It was his infectious enthusiasm for the organization’s mission, they say, that first attracted them to the Sleep in Heavenly Peace chapter. Both now count him as a dear friend.
“Kevin did all the behind-the-scenes stuff himself. With Steve and I taking this over, we’re kind of like, ‘Wow, how did he do all of this stuff by himself?’ It’s just incredible,” Martin says with a laugh. “I’ve got [Loveday] on speed dial. So we’ll definitely stay in touch.”
Loveday plans on going back to work part-time when back in Tennessee, and, of course, continuing the mission of no child sleeping on the floor in his town.
A person with good character shows trustworthiness, respect and fairness to others, as well as responsibility and citizenship. Those members who go out of their way to help others and those who overcome obstacles and lead with integrity are good candidates for the Mark V. Anderson Character-in-ActionTM Leadership Award.
Sigma Chi introduced the award to recognize the selfless acts of brothers. A formal recognition by the Fraternity allows non-members to appreciate the scope of the organization. For information about the award, see sigmachi.org/character.