ROY W. HENLEY
My Dad, Roy Wilson Henley’s voice fell silent today, June 13th, 2020 he has moved on from this world, one month shy of his 95th birthday. He was born to Henry and Mary on July 13th 1925 in Tracy City, Tennessee; growing up they had little money and mostly killed their own food. He would tell me stories of getting run home by the KKK , and another of him going to spend the weekend camping at the lake and a man carrying a gun telling them to not be nosing around in the woods and gave them a bottle of Shine with the warning to not go snooping around. Times when his dad would take a piece of paper and write a X on it as that was how grandpa would sign his name and tell my dad to go down in the Pine thicket and get a bottle from Fat Daddy, not the same “moonshiner”.
This man lived a life on his own terms to say the least.
He chose to join the United States Marine Corp and leave his Tracy City, Tennessee mountain home and get on a ship with complete strangers and go to places he had never heard of, to defend his country in the South Pacific, Iwo Jima and Guam. He returned with just some hearing loss and probably some images of war in his head that he couldn’t un see.
He also told how he and some fellas from his town in Tennessee needed a job and got in the bed of a flatbed truck and rode to Idaho to pick potato’s and then back to Tennessee.
Later moving to Cleveland, Ohio where he met my mom Florine and they moved to Kansas City, Kansas where he started working for GM, but for more steady work he got on at Sealright, where they printed and made milk cartons.
Had some heart issues and retired in his 50’s, not really financially ready for retirement but he made it work.
They got divorced in 1980 in which he repeatedly said was his biggest mistake.
They stayed friendly and it wasn’t a problem being at our house for holidays (Thankfully) and he would even just walk the adds from the paper to her house and hang them on her door without being noticed. Just because he knew she liked the adds.
He really liked to bowl and bowled in many league’s and we had a hole in the wall at the end of our hallway from him practicing, he found out the pillows weren’t a perfect backstop.
He loved golf and would work all day and drive out to Dubs Dread and walk 27 holes most nights. But couldn’t golf much after retirement.
He loved watching kids sports and trying to help kids better themselves with softball pitching.
He lived completely on his own and refusing any help from me or anyone else and drove himself wherever he wanted to go until April 2nd this year. That day he was having trouble breathing and called the ambulance and asked them to take him to the V.A., seems he had a heart attack and it had damaged his heart and he wasn’t getting enough oxygen. He never slept outside a hospital setting again. That’s still pretty good to live that long on your terms.
I’ll miss him very much but feel very blessed to have had him in my life this long.
Roy will be buried in the Leavenworth Veteran’s Administration National Cemetery, in Leavenworth, KS with full military honors at 12:30 pm on Tues., June 23. There will be a visitation for family and friends to attend from 10:30 to 11:30 am, on Tues, June 23, at the Alden-Harrington Funeral Home in Bonner Springs, KS.