Long, happy marriage is precious jewel for Losees

PROVO — This New Year's Eve, Richard Losee and his six-piece band will be playing tunes — with his wife, Jo Ann, at his side, as she has been for the past 52 years.

He's not about to let age and health problems stop the music.

Even though the years are catching up with him (he's 74), he's not walking as well as in earlier times and he's reporting for dialysis three days a week, he's still going strong.

Losee was born in Los Angeles on Christmas Day and grew up in Utah, attending Jordan High School. He started playing the saxophone when he was 8 years old. His mother played the piano, her brothers played the ukulele and the banjo. The whole family gathered around and made music.

He found a hero in Johnny Dunn, who played live music on the radio.

"I was just enamored and said to myself, 'That's for me!"' Losee said. "My dad's friend had a saxophone his child wasn't using. He brought it over and gave it to me. I still have it. It's no good now, but I've got it."

He met Jo Ann when the 16-year-old beauty came in to Dayne's Music to find a band to play at her high school's junior prom.

"Was it love at first sight? Oh, yeah," he said.

He married her when she was 17 just before he shipped out to Germany to serve in the Korean War in 1954. There he was assigned to lead the Army's dance band.

"I drilled the troops for the time when the Russians would come over the Iron Curtain. I knew all of the posts and where the missiles were."

The Losees were in Germany for two years. When they returned to the United States, Jo Ann Losee and her mother, Florence H. Bullock Ragan, opened Bullock's Jewel Box. Later, they enlarged and renamed the business Bullock and Losee Jewelers.

Previously, he studied music and business at Brigham Young University and sold insurance for New England Mutual Life Insurance Company for a time. He had come to Provo to manage Dayne's Music at 19.

But his niche turned out to be in jewelry.

The Losee "guild" store became known for its focus on gem quality and customer service.

Today, they have one store in Cottontree Square that's as famous for its Lladro and Hummel collections as its diamonds.

"We do a fabulous business in Lladro. It's the finest porcelain out of Valencia, Spain," Losee said.