Paul Boyer
From: Roger Moore, 2 May 2002
I can't let this thread pass without mentioning Paul Boyer of the
former
Rice
Grotto, ca. 1968-70 and much later a brief resident of the Kirkwood
Kaver
Kommune (ca. 1978 or 79). Paul, a geologist, had already left
Rice and the
Rice Grotto when I first heard of him on a visit from Florida during
which I
hooked up with Everage and others from the grotto for a trip to some
hill
country caves. They told me that he had taken a teaching job
at
Okaloosa-Walton Community College, not far from my home in Panama City
in the
Florida panhandle. While I was in school at Gainesville most
of the year, I
contacted him because we made frequent trips to the panhandle caves
in
Marianna and to southern Georgia. We met and started a long-term
friendship,
caving together whenever the opportunity presented itself.
Paul regaled me with tales of Texas caving in the Carta Valley
S.U.C.K.S.
days, undoubtedly one reason I chose to come to Texas for grad
school.
He was
active in Florida caving, forming the now-defunct Fort Rucker-Ozark
Grotto
("FROG") and the Southeastern Karst Survey for NW Fla and south Geogia
caves
("SEKS," of course; boy did he love to coin those acronyms.)
I left Florida for Texas and did not see him again (except for brief
visits
in route to Panama City) until he came to live in the Kirkwood Kaver
Kommune
for a few months while on what he described as a sabbatical.
What I did not
learn until some years later was that he had already been diagnosed
with an
untreatable form of cancer and he knew then that he only had a few
months to
live. We had a great visit, and I left none the wiser.
It was only 6 or 8
months later when I just called him to say hello that I received the
news
that he had died two weeks earlier.
I recall Paul fondly as an interesting person, an ardent caver, and
a good
friend.
Roger Moore
Greater Houston Grotto