People

Mr. Roy

Mr. Roy was one of the first people I met when I interviewed for a new job as an intern architect in Huntsville, Alabama in the spring of 1967. He was friendly, gregarious, and welcoming to me like he had known me forever. He was just average in size and appearance, but he was also an impressive figure, exuding energy, and confidence. As I got to know him over the next three years, my first impression of him never changed as I watched him in his work in the office and his interactions with people outside of work. He was a man of many interests and accomplishments, without a hint of arrogance or pride in himself or his abilities. He loved people and accepted them at face value without judgement or opinions, and he would not say anything negative about another person.

His name was Leroy but I never knew that until after I had left that firm almost four years later. We had very few conversations where he would reveal anything personal with me, so most of what I came to know about Roy I learned from the people who worked with him, or shared time with him away from the office. Mr. Roy was born in Iowa in 1898 and went on to become a licensed architect, opening his architectural office in the mid-1920s. However, when the Great Depression hit the country in the 1930s, he was forced to close his business and begin looking for other work. He was very vocal to us in the office that he would never stoop to selling apples on street corners as many of his friends did in those lean years. His training as an architect had included skills in drawing and drafting, so he found work as a draftsman which ultimately led him to an office in the steel fabrication industry in Alabama. There, he worked as a draftsman for over twenty-five years, and raised one son who followed in his footsteps to become an architect.

It was also there where his wife became bedridden with an unknown illness. It would remain an unknown illness as they refused to seek medical care, opting instead to rely on their ‘faith’ that she would be eventually healed. Roy and his wife were raised in the Church of Christ, Scientists which adheres to a belief that illness is all ‘in the mind’, and if one gets their ‘mind’ right illness will be banished from the body. They had a parade of Scientists ‘believers’ who visited the sick woman, offering prayers and positive encouragement for several months while she languished on her death bed. Their teenage son watched his mother’s health decline as he implored his father to take her to the hospital or call for a doctor to come see her. They were adamant she would eventually recover if they could only get their mind to believe. She never recovered and their son blamed his father. After high school their son left home for college and would not speak with his father for many years.

Finally, in 1964, Mr. Roy’s son, Lloyd, by then a partner in an architectural firm in Huntsville, decided to end the estrangement from his father. Though the son had said he could never forgive his father for making him watch his mother die, time had dulled the hurt enough to allow them to get back together, and Lloyd brought his father to Huntsville to ‘work’ for him in his office. I never really knew whether Mr. Roy was actually on the payroll, but he did reveal that he was receiving retirement checks from the government. When I started there in 1967 Mr. Roy was working and being productive, though his hours were very flexible. Lloyd had been able to put most of the past behind and I never saw any animosity between them. Lloyd called his father ‘Poppa’ and that was the name he had with the secretaries and Lloyd’s wife and girls. The rest of us in the office called him Mr. Roy.

After I had been there a few months I was learning more and more about Mr. Roy from others who knew him, and one of the stories they told me was about how he had come to join the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra, and how he had met his new wife. Seems that shortly after he had moved to Huntsville in the early 1960s, he visited a practice session of the newly-organized orchestra in response to an ad he saw in the paper. They were looking to increase the number of players and, being a musician himself, Mr. Roy thought he might be interested in joining. He filled out the application and in the ‘instrument’ block he wrote ‘piano or other.’ When they responded to his application, they said the orchestra wasn’t looking for another pianist but they wondered what the ’other’ instrument was that he played. His answer was, “what other instrument do you need?” They said they really could use a stand-up bass player, so Mr. Roy told them he did not presently own a stand-up bass but that he would get one and come back in three weeks. He bought the bass fiddle in Birmingham and traveled there three days each week for three weeks, with constant practice between lessons, went back to the orchestra for a short audition, then played the first symphony of that season, no one ever knowing that he had never played the stand-up bass before.

For Mr. Roy one of the benefits he gained from the orchestra was meeting Veda, a single lady and member of the Symphony Guild. She was a decade younger and that worked out well as any woman Mr. Roy’s age would not have been able to keep up with him. Within two months after he joined the orchestra he and Veda were married and making all the black-tie fundraising events. Mr. Roy was a perfect fit into that layer of local high society as he had the presence and bearing of a tie-and-tails veteran, and being recently from out of town gave him even more cachet among the symphony crowd. While he loved music, and loved playing in the orchestra, no one would ever know how much fun Mr. Roy had ‘playing’ with the society folks and laughing with Veda over some of their antics. Mr. Roy found great pleasure in tweaking some of their standards, like setting his bow tie just a bit askew during the meet-and-greet before the concerts.

Any discussion with Mr. Roy and Veda would eventually come around to the subject of roses. They loved roses. They were members of the Rose Society both locally and state-wide. They said they had over a hundred varieties of roses growing over every square foot of ground outside their house. Each year they entered flowers in the local rose beauty contest. Mr. Roy took his roses very seriously as he thought of it as the ultimate challenge to outwit nature and get the perfect rose in spite of the weather, the bugs, the fungus, or the cats.

Mr. Roy and Veda also loved their cats, a subject you could always engage in with Mr. Roy. When a new cat showed up at their house it was the news at the office the next day. Or, if a cat disappeared overnight, that also would make news. Mr. Roy said they had dedicated a room at the back of their house to be for the cats. A window in that room was left open at all times enough for the cats to move in and out as they pleased, and where they could come in and find food. Every cat was afforded medical care as needed, and all cats were spayed and neutered. Mr. Roy kept us current on the numbers, usually in the 30s or 40s. The last time I asked him how many were at home that day and he said 39.

I bring up the subject of cats as it connects to this next story: Lloyd had told us that Mr. Roy was an accomplished pianist as he occasionally played for his granddaughters at their home, but the office employees never had the chance to hear him play. We would frequently prod Mr. Roy with questions about when he was going to invite us over for a concert. One day we got the news: Everyone was invited to Mr. Roy’s and Veda’s for a piano recital at their home where he would play a mix of songs, some popular tunes, and some of Mr. Roy’s own compositions. Veda said she would have some finger foods and light deserts, enough for the eight employees plus wives, husbands, and best friends. This was to be a one-time event, and when the evening came, we were all there, gathered on the front porch, and we all went in together. . . .

. . . .At this point I’m going to interrupt this story to remind the reader here that this house has an entire room dedicated to 30 or 40 cats. And this room is connected to the house by a door which is opened frequently to put food in the room, and for other purposes to serve the cats. If you are reading this you probably are familiar with the distinct cat odor. In this case it was, to say the least, overwhelming. My conclusion at the time was that prolonged exposure to any offensive odor could deaden the olfactory nerves sufficiently to render the odor no longer offensive. . . .   

When we entered the house there were not nearly enough burning candles to overcome the stench of that many cats. But everyone seemed to bluff their way through the finger foods and the small talk long enough to be seated in the folding chairs Veda had set out for us.

Mr. Roy’s piano concert was everything we could have wanted. His skill level at the keyboard was nothing short of professional. He played a varied mix of styles and rhythms, several familiar pop tunes, some well-known classical melodies, and he closed out the evening with a light-hearted flair of tunes he had composed for himself and Veda. He performed the entire mini-concert from memory.

In the three and one-half years I worked in the office with Mr. Roy, he never uttered a profane word and, by all accounts of those who knew him, he lived a clean, moral life. He exhibited all the characteristics of a genuine Christian, though I never heard him say anything about his personal beliefs or lifestyle practices.

Mr. Roy passed away in 1991 at age 93. I count it a privilege to have known him.