I have written extensively of my adventures in the Air Force and I have included others in my second book. One of those is an account of a warning given me by a member of the Thames Valley CID when he became aware that I was giving my English friends in Oxford goodies from the PX. Another favorite of mine is the story "Piccadilly Queen" which details my activities in Oxford, England where I enjoyed a 90 day temporary duty assignment at RAF Upper Heyford in 1952.After my discharge from the Air Force in the spring of 1955, I returned to Mesic and lived with my parents in the house where I was born. I enjoyed a time of decompression while I became a civilian again. That was a memorable summer of hanging out in Willie Gray and Mary Alice Berry's store and visiting with the gentry of Mesic. That little store was where all the "pickers" congregated and we made some great music that summer. Even when it was just Uncle Frank Cahoon, Joline and I playing it was awesome. (Bad memory is a blessing to the elderly. We might have sounded terrible but I don't remember it that way) I still enjoy playing guitar and play my 1962 Fender Jaguar guitar daily.

But my money ran out and I was forced to return to work so after a stint of playing a really cool insurance investigator for the company now called Equifax, I landed at MCAS Cherry Point where I spent the next thirty two years earning a living. In March 1957 I married Kay Blackwell of New Bern (originally of Danville, VA) and we raised our family in the Neuse Forest community just east of New Bern.

We had two sons and a daughter. Our sons, Brian and Randy, still live in the New Bern area and we see them frequently but our daughter, Ellen, is now deceased. She was stricken with Crohn's Disease in 1979 and had extensive surgery to remove the blockages from her intestines. It was a slow recovery but by the spring of 1981 she appeared to have regained her health. Then tragedy struck. Her story appears in my first book which is entitled, "Life Is Not Measured By Its Length" ... the epitaph on her grave marker. I also wrote of her in my second book in a story titled "Frozen in Time".

I retired from federal civil service in July 1987 with just over thirty six years of creditable service. I stayed active as an elder in our church, which at that time was Neuse Forest Presbyterian Church of New Bern, NC. Our church was without a pastor for more than three years soon after I retired and as Clerk of Session (Board of Elders) I acted in lieu of the pastor at many meetings. In addition to my church duties, Kay and I worked as volunteers at Craven Regional Medical Center in New Bern from 1988 through December 1999. I walked thousands of miles, many times pushing a wheel chair, transporting patients to and from their outpatient appointments, but near the end sat at the information desk in the hospital lobby answering the phone and giving directions about the hospital. (I was being threatened with a knee replacement so I had to curtail my walking). In January 2003 New Hope Presbytery appointed a lay speaker as interim pastor of our church. He was a terrible preacher and this led to a wholesale exodus of our members, including Kay and me. We now enjoy membership in historic old First Presbyterian Church of New Bern where we are happily lost in a crowd of 1,200 members.

The year 2002 was not good to Kay and me. She had extensive dental surgery and I suffered a heart attack in September. I underwent angioplasty and my arterial blockages were opened with stents. After drastic changes in lifestyle and diet plus eleven weeks of cardiac rehab I am seemingly recovered but now live with the limitations of having lost more than half my heart in the September attack. After rehab I bought an exercise bike and a treadmill which I use almost daily to try to strengthen the remainder of my heart and stave off the next attack. Life is not as much fun as it once was but I am happy to be alive.

In 1996 I wrote a tribute to an old friend who was a gospel singer and for whom I played bass guitar when she traveled about in 1978 testifying of her healing from cancer. Nancy Winfrey of The Pamlico News, which is published weekly in Oriental, NC, printed that column thus starting my brief career of writing for the paper. I continued writing through the summer of 1998 when I published my first book. Since that time I have fallen from grace for reasons unknown to me and at present couldn’t get a paid classified ad published in The Pamlico News. My first book was a collection of 32 short stories of the type I wrote for The Pamlico News and is still available today. The cost is $5 plus postage.

My second book, "Grandpa was a Yankee... and other tales" is a collection of 20 short stories. It was a more limited edition but a few copies are still available at a cost of $4 plus postage. An e-mail to kaynroy@suddenlink.net will get you a response telling where the books may be obtained. (If you prefer Snail Mail, send it to PO Box 14007, New Bern, NC 28561)