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Obituaries

Roy's story began on April 9th, 1941. It was a Wednesday, and it was the beginning of what would become an amazing story, full of chapters so memorable as to sometimes be almost unbelievable. It was the story of a young man who was the son of a preacher, at times living up to the reputation of the stereotypical "preacher's kid".
Over the years, he told tales of how he and his buddies would leave the house on Friday evenings after school with a bedroll, a fishing pole, and a rifle. They would go hunting and camp in the woods around Sallisaw, living off the land until Sunday morning, when he knew he had to be home in time to get to church. He said that he probably ate just about every kind of animal in the area on those outings, and warned against ever eating a woodpecker. Evidently they tasted pretty bad.
There were stories of how he rode his bicycle all over town. He was a bit of a daredevil, riding down gravel roads on bikes with no brakes, and he learned the hard way that hitting barbed wire while doing so was a painful experience. He even told of tying a rope to the seat of a bike and riding it over the side of a strip mine, into the water far below.
As he got older, he and some of those same friends explored the caves in the area, and he told of the time one of his friends found a drop-off in one of those caves… found it the hard way, falling several feet in the pitch black of the cave and knocking himself unconscious. Of how they were all terrified that he had been killed until they finally found him, and managed to drag him back out.
He told stories about driving through the quarry inside the mountain in Marble City, where it was like driving in a cave with support pillars that held up the very mountain itself. And how he scared himself one time, by nearly driving over the edge of a drop-off inside that mountain... of how he once "borrowed" a police car that someone had left parked, and returning it after he had cleaned it up. He joked that when he returned it, it was in better shape than when he borrowed it.
With all those crazy chapters in the book of his life, it's a wonder that he ever managed to settle down. But he found the love of his life in Nancy Bull. They married young – he was 19, and she was 17, and it was a strong love, strong enough to last nearly 55 years.
He was a kind and loving man… a loyal and supporting husband, father, grandfather, and even great-grandfather. Even to his last days, he spoke wistfully of wanting to go fishing again. He loved his fishing, though he seldom got to go. He was a devout Christian, who in his last days, mentioned to his daughter Kathy that he hoped he had "done right by them". This was toward the end, when he was fading in and out of consciousness, and she was never really sure who he was talking about. But that was a central part of his character. Whoever you were, and whatever your dealings with him were, he always tried to "do right" by people.
To Roy, it didn't matter if you were religious or not, or if you happened to follow a faith other than his own, what your religion was. It didn't matter if you were straight or gay, black, white, Asian, or purple… he didn't judge. He proved this time and time again, and showed by his example what kind of people we should all strive to be. He was the kind of Christian that all Christians claim to want to be, but so often aren't. As they say, he didn't just talk the talk, he walked the walk.
On February 25th, 2015, Roy started yet another chapter of his life. It was only appropriate that this, too, was a Wednesday. Our hearts ache at the loss of his smile and he will be sorely missed. But he wouldn't want tears shed at his passing. He would ask instead that you rejoice for him. He finally gets to go fishing again.

Nancy says he'll be learning from the best… the fisher of men.

 

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