Clement LaPlante, 85, of Derry, NH passed away Friday, July 19, 2019 at the Parkland Medical Center in Derry. He was born on September 22, 1933 in Van Buren, ME, a son of the late Pierre and Alvine LaPlante.
Clement LaPlante started life as the youngest boy in a family of fifteen children and grew up on a potato farm in Maine. By the time he was 30, he and his young wife Jeannine had 8 children which kept them very busy. He was a potato farmer with 110 acres in production and had a potato barn downtown with rail access and he also delivered his potatoes by truck to southern New England. He also was a steel worker in southern New England in between planting and harvest time.
In 1969, he decided to move his large family to Derry, NH and buy a small produce business called Redi Peel Potato Service. He grew the business so that he was processing a tractor trailer load of potatoes every other week. There are many men of a certain age who grew up in Derry and whose first job was unloading 50lb potato bags for Clem LaPlante.
Clem soon decided that the booming real estate market was something he should get into and he and a partner started building houses in the Derry area. In addition to building new houses, he bought older homes and became a landlord on the side and just recently sold his last rental property in June of this year. He also found the time to volunteer at the soup kitchen for many years and in his retirement he drove around to area supermarkets in his pickup collecting food for the Soup Kitchen in Manchester. He was a former Knights of Columbus Member and a communicant of St Thomas Aquinas Church in Derry.
He was a respected and well-liked business and community member and a well-loved patriarch of a large and widespread family.
He leaves his beloved wife Jeannine, eight children, Lucille, Joan and her husband Jim, Janet, Phillip, Guy and his wife Karen, Edward, Louise and her husband David, and Robert and his wife Maho, sixteen grandchildren, six great grandchildren, two sisters, Lucien and Rita, as well as many nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by two of his children, Donald and Elaine.
Following cremation, a memorial Mass was celebrated on Tuesday, July 23rd at 10:00am in St. Thomas Aquinas Parish, 26 Crystal Avenue, Derry. Burial followed in the Holy Cross Cemetery, Gilcreast Road, Londonderry. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the New Horizons Soup Kitchen, 199 Manchester Street, Manchester, NH 03103.