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