SOVERN LARKINS JR.
Sovern John Larkins Jr., age 96, passed away in Jacksonville FL on June 5, 2025. He was born on October 19, 1928, in a farmhouse outside Princeton, Kentucky. He attended a one-room schoolhouse, the Eureka School, through eighth grade, and then graduated at age 15 from Butler High School in 1944. He worked at the Princeton Dairy, the Kentucky Whip and Collar Company, and spent a semester at the University of Kentucky before joining the Army. While in the army, he served in the Occupation of Japan, and always treasured his photos of that time period, preserved in two scrapbooks.
Upon leaving the army, S.J. moved to Nashville, TN, and enrolled in Vanderbilt University. Thanks to the GI bill and part-time jobs with the post office and a land surveyor, he was able to work his way through college while at the same time dating Betty Gardner, who became his wife in 1954. Betty and SJ were happily married for 69 years until she passed away in 2023.
S.J. started a career with IBM, selling typewriters. But he shortly afterwards entered the securities industry, where he would spend the rest of his career. S.J. was called “Jack” by most friends and business associates, and “Buck” by his family. He loved to fish and play golf. He valued the importance of exercise, always enjoying getting out for a walk around the neighborhood or on the beach.
If asked, S.J. would tell you “farm stories” about life on the farm in rural Kentucky during the Depression, when the family grew most of their own food, butchered hogs, re-roofed a barn with shingles they made themselves with a tool called a froe, and enjoyed homemade cornbread cooked in a wood-burning stove. Despite being a poor farm family during hard times, they were never hungry. They rode to Ogden Memorial Methodist Church every Sunday in a mule-drawn wagon.
S.J. Larkins is survived by his daughter Lyda Larkins Astrove (husband Bob) and grandsons Billy Astrove (wife Allie) and Scott Astrove.