Teenie
Linda just handed me this morning’s PCNH Death Notices & Funerals page. A surprise was that Roy Boone died unexpectedly last Friday. Roy, a year younger than I*, and his brother Earle, a year older, went to Cove School with us through the 1940s and Roy graduated in Linda’s Bay High class of 1954. There was a while when the Boone family lived in the old Flowers house at the corner of W. Beach Drive and Foster Avenue, two blocks west of our house. When we retired and I told Roy we were moving home, he asked if we were moving into "the old Weller homestead", which he knew from living in the neighborhood.
Roy and Margaret moved to Apalachicola in 1988, four years after Linda, Tass and I did. They attended First UMC, a block east of us at Trinity Episcopal, seems to me Margaret was in the choir, and we connected socially and enjoyed them. All our growing up years, Roy was called “Teenie” by family and friends, including at school. Not long after they arrived in Apalachicola, Roy said of the Episcopal priest, Father Tom Weller, “Margaret, that’s Carroll Weller,” which is what I was called from first grade through high school. At some early point in our sharing Apalachicola together, Roy called me aside and said, “I won’t call you Carroll if you won’t call me Teenie,” and we shook hands on that.
A retired USAF colonel and fighter pilot, Roy continued his love for flying, though I don't know whether he owned an airplane or flew one as a member of a club. At some time after our 1998 retirement and moving home to Panama City, I read in the PCNH that his plane had crashed in the woods west of Apalachicola. As I recall, Roy was unharmed.
We didn’t stay in touch with them after retiring from parish ministry, but I always admired Roy as a good and honest man, and I probably was as surprised to hear of his Air Force career as he was of my Navy time. Reading of his death saddens me greatly this morning, and I’m sure it will many others who knew and respected him.
Thos+