Larry Earl "Skeet" McCleskey Jr. loved to cook, hunt for treasure at flea markets and make friends.
"He loved serving people, and he loved them enjoying his food," said his father, Larry Earl McCleskey Sr. "He'd invite people over, friends, strangers, even if you were walking down the street and he didn’t know you, it was ‘come in and eat!' He never met a stranger."
Skeet McCleskey, 49, of Sandy Springs, died in his sleep Wednesday.
A service is scheduled for 2 p.m. Tuesday at Sandy Springs United Methodist Church.
A 1980 graduate of Chamblee High School, Mr. McCleskey owned Global Surplus, which bought and liquidated the excess inventory of retail businesses. He entered the resale business by working first for his father at Mid South Supply, an industrial salvage company.
Mr. McCleskey was a "treasure hunter," his father said, and liked to spend his off-hours at estate sales and flea markets, collecting works of art at bargain prices.
He enjoyed cooking even more than treasure hunting, and he and his father built a "cook house" in his front yard, with an open-air barbecue pit, a covered industrial stove and seating for several friends. Mr. McCleskey liked to match wits with other barbecue cooks and would frequently compete in cook-offs for charitable organizations.
Last week the father and son competed at an American Cancer Society fundraiser in Blairsville. "He beat me," the elder McCleskey said. "He won the ribs and I won the sauce."
Skeet McCleskey's 9-year-old son, Chandler, is a Cub Scout, and the Flickr photo stream from Pack 1050 in Sandy Springs shows Mr. McCleskey operating a massive barbecue cooker for Cub Scout outings.
"His passion was not only cooking but creating," said his sister, Kathy Barela. "When he’d go to a restaurant and see four things on the menu that he wanted, he would combine all four in a dish. He'd ask them to take the asparagus from this and the tenderloin from that and the onion from this, and that would be what he ate."
Mr. McCleskey earned his nickname as a boy, when his father would come home and ask him, "How's my little skeeter-bug doing?" When he started school "he shortened it to Skeet," his sister said. He grew up bigger than the nickname would imply, standing almost 6 feet tall and weighing in at a burly 250-plus.
The homeless would frequently gather near his warehouse on Fulton Industrial Boulevard, and Mr. McCleskey made a point of serving them meals or offering them spare clothing, a mission he called Warehouse Worship.
Survivors also include his wife, Janet Boodley McCleskey, and mother, Wanda McCleskey The family asks that in lieu of flowers donations be made to the charity of your choice.
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