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"We need this day after a year and a half of uncertainty," David White said of a couple described during the service as vivacious, giving, intelligent, organized, compassionate, humorous and driven.
The Calverts vanished without a trace March 3, 2008. They lived in Atlanta and aboard a boat moored at Harbour Town in Sea Pines on Hilton Head Island. A man suspected of killing them committed suicide eight days later.
The Calverts owned the company that manages the Harbour Town Yacht Basin, two boating and water sports businesses, and Harbour Town Resorts, which offers villas for rent.
Authorities say the Calverts were killed by Dennis Gerwing, chief financial officer for The Club Group, a Hilton Head property management and real estate firm that handled accounting for some of the Calverts' businesses.
The memorial service at Northside United Methodist Church came on a sun-splashed day in the wealthy Buckhead section of Atlanta.
It came three weeks after John Lewis Calvert, 48, and Elizabeth White Calvert, 46, were declared deceased by a probate judge, even though their bodies have not been found and no one has been arrested.
"You didn't deserve this fate," David White said as he read a final letter he titled "Dear Liz and John."
He spoke of the indignity of their deaths, something he hopes Sunday's service and the two scholarship funds set up in the couple's names can help rectify.
A large contingent came from Converse College in Spartanburg, S.C., where Liz Calvert was in the Class of 1984 and served on the board. Converse lapel pins with purple ribbons were passed out at the door.
"Liz was a role model," said Converse president Betsy Fleming. "She was a woman who did very much with her gifts and talents, from majoring in math and the humanities, to law school, to her career as an attorney with UPS, to her love of adventure. She showed us how to live with great purpose and passion."
Speakers included the two survivors, White, and John Calvert's aunt, Nancy Calvert, who wore green to celebrate his colorful life and recall his favorite color as a child.
Nancy Cappelmann, Harbour Town harbormaster, cited the couple's deep love for Harbour Town, the unofficial symbol of Hilton Head Island. She said John Calvert had "ideas by the boat load" to make it better, and he treated employees as family.
Kyle Webb of Atlanta, a fraternity brother at Georgia Tech and best man in the Calverts' wedding in December 1988, recalled John Calvert as a skinny, "obsessively organized" perfectionist who brought an infectious energy and excitement to everything.
In college, John Calvert's pressed shirts hung in the closet, organized by color, with every hanger set apart at equal distance. He was known to take the best notes in class, then rewrite them afterward to make them perfect. He kept boxes full of back issues of Popular Mechanics magazine, and at restaurants he never deviated from a well-done steak with french fries, no salad nor vegetable in the vicinity of his plate.
His brother-in-law said Calvert had an "update your Day-Timer" message on this Day-Timer.
Teri McClure, who worked with Liz Calvert for 13 years at UPS, said she was " 'green' before it was cool" and loved animals, especially her cat, T.C., and dog, Sadie, but disliked wearing dresses and skirts, dealing with children and insincere people.
Liz Calvert also was a meticulous, detail-oriented, "wonderful lawyer" who liked black-and-white issues.
"She appreciated the rule of law," McClure said.
The couple loved each other, several speakers said.
Webb said their first date was at an Atlanta joint called The Beer Mug, and John Calvert came home saying he'd met "her." Her who? Webb asked. "The one," Webb recalls his best friend saying.
"I asked him what they talked about," Webb said. "He said they discussed the Dow Jones industrial average."
They threw their separate lives together to become what David White called "an unbreakable pair."
Even though John Calvert did not fly, he supported Liz's new piloting passion that a friend said grew into what they called "Liz Air." Even though John Calvert pulled for Georgia Tech and she pulled for Georgia, where she earned her law degree, and even though he may have never even touched the pets he called only "your dog" and "your cat," the two were never known to raise a voice at the other, friends said.
John Calvert had long ties to Hilton Head. When he bought into Harbour Town, he bought into his dream. Liz had only recently left her job with UPS to join him aboard the Yellow Jacket yacht named as a tribute to his alma mater.
"At Harbour Town Yacht Basin, they absolutely found their niche, their place in life, their sense of community and sense of family," McClure said.
Liz Calvert approached the business in an analytical way, while he was the "consummate social chairman" as he had been for the Beta Theta Pi fraternity at Georgia Tech.
The couple were last seen heading to a late-afternoon meeting with Gerwing on March 3, 2008. Investigators believe the three met to discuss funds that were missing from the Calverts' island businesses. It is believed that she challenged Gerwing and that he disliked her.
The Rev. G. Gil Watson, who led the memorial service, said, "We learn fairly early in life that life is just not fair."
It is not our place to understand fairness, he said.
"Life is not fair, but God is good, even in the face of life that is not fair," he said. "God is good because God is love. Love is what we all seek. Love lasts forever."
