MALTA, Ohio — John Lemaster’s childhood memories are often painful.
“I pretty much grew up around a lot of hate and negativity,” he said.
The Circleville native had both a mother and father he says abused alcohol. But there also was a cloud of racism in the home. And it engulfed him when he was just 16 years old.
That’s when he says his father shot and killed himself. And that changed everything.
“Just from that point, with all the anger and hate that I growed up with, it just more or less boiled out,” Lemaster said. “It literally made me hate the world, made me hate everybody. I absolutely had a lot of anger and hate toward everybody that got near me.”
As a young man, Lemaster lived in Newark and says he spent time with skinhead clubs in the area. And he eventually sealed that hate onto his skin with several tattoos, including a swastika on his stomach and a Klansman with a burning cross on his back.
“I think it was a lot of my dad’s beliefs kind of bleeding out onto me because I was just so disturbed, and everything that I growed up hearing from him and other people in my family, it just kind of bled out into me,” he said.
He said, eventually his heart began to heal. But his tattoos were still a painful reminder. He would rarely take off his shirt.
His heart opened even wider, however, when he and his wife decided to adopt. The little boy they were eventually matched with in Florida was Black.
“The moment I met the boy and we took him, and I picked him up, I just fell in love with him,” he said. “I mean, he was just a happy little boy. To this day, I still couldn’t ask for a better kid. He’s a great boy.”
He and his wife adopted Marshaun when he was 1 year old, bringing him back to Ohio at 18 months. Today, Marshaun is 14 years old and in ninth grade.
“You know, they say, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear,” Lemaster said. “At that point in time, Marshawn was my teacher, probably one of the best teachers I’d ever met. That little boy has taught me more love then I’d ever know.”
And while his heart and mind were free from hate at that point, the permanent reminders of his past remained.
Then he saw a Facebook post that would change his life. It was from Billy White, owner of Red Rose Tattoo in Zanesville.
White was offering to cover tattoos of hate for free.
“The reality is, we’ve all made mistakes in our lives, something that we may not be proud of, in varying levels for sure, but I think redemption is really powerful, it’s really beautiful, and I just try to provide grace for the people that really need it,” White said.
The response to his post was overwhelming. Now, three years later, his shops has covered around 200 tattoos. He’s personally covered more than 100, including those on Lemaster. The powerful moment when he covered Lemaster’s large back tattoo was featured in the 2018 award-winning documentary Beneath the Ink.
“I literally teared up and was probably seconds from crying,” Lemaster said. “I mean, it made a big impact on my life at that time. I mean, Billy did a great job. I honestly don’t think he realizes how much he changed my life doing that.”
White says he was inspired after seeing the coverage of the Charlottesville rally. When he learned the driver of the vehicle that killed a woman was from Ohio, he felt compelled to do something.
“We just really considering tattooing to be like a form of healing, and to use that tool and to use that art form to help people grow and get past things in their life that they’re not confident in themselves anymore, it’s powerful,” White said. “I’m a firm believer that you can’t show someone love until you love yourself, and a lot of these people don’t have love for themselves because they have these badges, these images on them that remind them of these terrible parts in their life that that’s just not who they are anymore, so to be able to help people is really special.”
White says he now is on a mission to continue covering up racist tattoos, regardless of the financial loss.
“If a guy like me, in the middle of nowhere, can do something, and a lot of people are paying attention, then I think we call can do something to make the world a little bit better of a place,” White said.