Premium ContentClick on Premium Content on the Featured navigation bar for information.
Joe McDermott’s talents for growing grass and marketing it were signature components of his Omaha landscaping business, Loveland Lawns.
His rambling advertisements had a lot of people scratching their heads, laughing and reading the fine print and then patronizing his business.
“Rhett Isn’t Chasing Scarlet Anymore,” read a headline in one of his ads in the 1980s. Others around that time proclaimed “Pre-Ayatollah Prices” or “Times Got Tougher, the Drinks Got Stronger.”
“He was a promoter,” said a son, Michael, of Kansas City, Mo. “He was a marketer. The more outlandish it was, the better. He loved to advertise, whether he was selling anything or not.”
The son said Joe McDermott also was a pioneer in the sod business and in the development of the turfgrass industry.
McDermott or “Joe Loveland,” as he often was called died Saturday at Papillion Manor. He was 88 and had been in declining health for three years, his son said.
A funeral Mass will be at 10 a.m. Thursday at St. Gerald Catholic Church, 9602 Q St. in Ralston.
“Our plan is to put his casket on a sod truck and drive it from the church to Calvary Cemetery,” Michael McDermott said, to salute his father’s love of natural green grass.
The son traced the beginning of Loveland Lawns to the lawn-mowing service that he and his brother, Patrick, started in the mid-1950s. When the brothers went to college and people continued to call the house for lawn care, the parents took over.
Soon Joe and Ada McDermott were selling fertilizer from the basement of their home near 99th and F Streets and opening a warehouse nearby.
“When my father started, there was no such thing as the sod business or high quality turf sod,” Michael McDermott said. “There was pasture grass and blue grass seed. The whole concept that you would clean grass seed, to take out weed seeds, was a new concept. It was the beginning of the organized turfgrass industry.”
McDermott was president of the Midwest Sod Producers Association in 1969, vice president of the American Sod Producers in 1970 and a founding member of the National Lawn and Garden Distributors Association.
The senior McDermott also helped to pioneer a certified sod program in Nebraska and worked to establish turfgrass as a field of study in the department of agronomy and horticulture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources.
Michael McDermott, who directs Loveland Lawns’ Kansas City outlet called Grass Pad and is president of Loveland Lawns, said his father was active in the landscaping business well into his 80s.
Joe McDermott started in retail sales in Lincoln. In 1947 he moved to Omaha to manage an Army surplus store, where he developed his flair for advertising and marketing.
His disjointed prose had people wondering if a word or a sentence was missing. But that was part of his quirky style and just the way he wanted it, he once told The World-Herald.
In addition to his son Michael, McDermott’s survivors include his wife of 68 years, Ada McDermott of Omaha; son Patrick of Omaha; four grandchildren; and two great-granddaughters.
Loveland Lawns will be closed Thursday for the McDermott services.
World-Herald librarian Jeanne Hauser contributed to this report.
Contact the writers:
444-1052, jane.palmer@owh.com
444-1165, sue.truax@owh.com
Copyright ©2012 Omaha World-Herald®. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, displayed or redistributed for any purpose without permission from the Omaha World-Herald.
