Couple Was United in Life and Death

Camden Courier-Post, December 2, 2007

Camden Courier-Post - December 2, 2007

When William and Levota Macklin met and married nearly 40 years ago, it was the second time around for both.

Nine children between them, they built a lasting home, as their children describe it, “and a lasting love.”

“We loved each other,” says Levota Macklin’s son, Carl Thomas Jr., of his step-siblings. “We don’t even speak of each other as stepchildren. We speak of family … We were all united.”

United behind a pair of soul mates who died together in an October fire at their Camden home. Levota Macklin was 85; William Macklin was 84.

As a child, Levota Thomas earned the nickname “Candy” because of her penchant for the treats sold in her mother’s Camden store. A city native, she was born at Cooper Hospital, where she worked for 28 years, and where she died of massive injuries after jumping from a second-floor window in her burning home.

“She was a dedicated employee,” Thomas said. “Whenever they wanted anything done the right way, they made sure they got Levota to do it.”

William R.D. Macklin, known as Mack, was a product of West Virginia coal country, where he learned the values of hard work and endurance. He moved to Camden after his first marriage ended, and met his second wife in 1967. He was employed in security at Classic Cars of Cherry Hill.

“You could not ask for a finer man,” said William Macklin’s youngest son, Alvin. And he can hardly remember a time when Candy, as he calls his stepmother, was not in his life.

“She was a beautiful woman,” said the Fredericksburg, Va., resident, who was with his father and stepmother on the last day of their lives. “Not only was she physically beautiful, but she made an effort to make people happy.”

In their private lives, the couple enjoyed long car rides to visit relatives, as well as meals at Collingswood Diner. But their commitment was to church and family. They were longtime members of the First Nazarene Baptist Church in Camden.

“They were very, very church-oriented,” Thomas said. “I don’t think my mother missed too much church at all. They were just good, God-fearing people.”

And while William Macklin kept West Virginia in his heart, he was as devoted as Levota Macklin was to Camden. Despite the city’s slide, the Macklins stayed, in an Everett Street house Thomas described as the kind of grandiose structure they don’t make anymore.

“Camden was their home,” he said. “They had been there all their lives together, and she was born there … He being her soul mate, anything she wanted, he was right there with her.”

While he initially escaped the fire, William Macklin ran back in for his wife, not knowing she had jumped.

He died of smoke inhalation.

Earlier in the day, Alvin Macklin had a revealing conversation with his father on the way home from their day trip to Atlantic City.

“My father told me, ‘You know, I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life … but my life has changed and I am happy with my life today.’” Alvin Macklin recalled. “And I just looked at him.”

Alvin Macklin got a cell phone call about the fire before he could even make it back to Virginia. It did not surprise him to learn his father had gone back into the house for his wife.

Earlier that morning at breakfast, he recalls, his stepmother jokingly said of her marriage, “Don’t nobody want him but me, and nobody want me but him.”

Later, as she lay dying, Alvin Thomas thought to himself, “Lord, don’t let this woman wake up and find out Bill is gone.”

One month later, facing the first Thanksgiving without their parents, Carl Thomas and his siblings turned to their rock solid faith.

While fire devastated that grand Camden house and took the Macklins’ lives, their children sincerely believe they now have another home: a mansion built by God.

By Christina Mitchell.