Roy Everett Young

Roy’s love of nature began in his Maine childhood. His actions on behalf of earth prove one person can make the world a better place.

Roy was the surprise second child in his family, born in Portland ME to Doris Elva Dickey Young and Raymond Orrin Young and his brother Tod who was already 16 years old. Roy is survived by his wife Rosa Venezia, Tod and Mary of Sandy, Utah.

When he was in high school, Roy read a "Reader’s Digest" article about Euell Gibbons, the wild plant forager. Roy was fascinated and wrote Gibbons a letter. That summer, Gibbons drove up to Roy's house in Maine and convinced his parents to let Roy spend the summer helping build the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School.

From West Falmouth, Maine, Roy went to Duke University, studying geology on a Navy ROTC scholarship. When he registered as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam war in 1968, the scholarship was withdrawn. His parents remortgaged their home to finance his remaining Duke education.

One trip west found Roy digging fossils in the Green River Formation in Wyoming (legal then on BLM land). When he ran out of gas money in Denver, he sold a few of the fossil fish he’d collected and began his career as a retail geologist. Soon he was traveling to natural history museum gift shops with a van full of rocks.

In 1976 Roy moved to Boulder, Colorado, and with Pete Grogan co-founded Boulder Eco-Cycle, one of the first curbside recycling programs in the US — with a fleet of re-purposed school buses.

In 1978 Roy took part in what had been planned as a one-day civil disobedience action at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant in Colorado. This evolved into a year-long blockade of the railroad tracks, obstructing the flow of nuclear weapons. The Rocky Flats Truth Force emerged with Roy as one of its key spokespeople. Hundreds of peaceful protesters were arrested and charged with trespassing. The Truth Force selected Roy to be one of ten defendants in a high-profile trial in Jefferson County Court, arguing that the blockade was morally and legally justified because it restrained the spread of immoral nuclear weapons. Though Roy’s eloquent science-based testimony at trial impressed the judge and jury (when they were allowed to hear it), the Truth Force was found guilty of trespassing. Roy continued as an active participant in ongoing efforts against the plant, which closed, by an act of Congress, in 1992. Meanwhile, Roy led a backcountry civil disobedience campaign in 1986 to disrupt nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site.
When James Watt, then-secretary of the interior, refused to meet with or debate with environmental groups. Roy paid for a group of about 8 people to get into a mining industry convention in Denver. He stood up in a crowd of anti-environmentalists and asked Watt to debate in front of them. As he was hauled off by security, the rest of the group stood up one by one to continue reading the letter he had written.
River rafting became the perfect vehicle for Roy’s geological passions. From the mid-1980s, he outfitted annual Grand Canyon trips during which he loved to talk about the geology revealed by the river. Roy always pointed out the Great Unconformity, a gap between rock layers representing a billion years in some places. Sometimes the Great Unconformity became his nickname.
In the1980s Roy was invited to geology conventions to sell his fossil and mineral. Those sales financed the first Nature’s Own science and nature store in Nederland, Colorado in 1986.
As Nature’s Own became more successful, stores were added in Fort Collins, Breckenridge, and Boulder (closed in 2019). Roy’s goal for the stores was to connect customers with earth science, geologic time, and extinction through the minerals and fossils featured. The stores’ profits fund environmental work around the world.
Roy was instrumental in establishing several of the organizations Nature’s Own supported, often extending creative means of support over many years.
For example, Roy donated the Fort Collins store’s historic building to Idea Wild so that the rent paid would give Idea Wild sustaining income. As Wally Van Sickle, Idea Wild’s executive director, said, “The rent alone has funded over 2000 of our projects and the events we have had in the building have made another 900 possible. The reliable monthly income has also stabilized the organization and allowed IDEA WILD to thrive and not surf up and down on the fundraising roller coaster.”

Nature’s Own’s in Fort Collins and Nederland, will continue under the leadership of Roy’s wife Rosa Venezia and his long-time business partner Kate Readio. Aaron Schneider, Nature's Own retail manager for 26 years, will lead the business into the future as its new president.
Profits will help support environmental non-profits.
Donations may be made in Roy’s honor to any of these…

Center for Biological Diversity: www.biologicaldiversity.org
Global Greengrants Fund: www.greengrants.org
IDEA WILD: www.ideawild.org
Rainforest Action Network: www.ran.org
Wild Earth Guardians: www.wildearthguardians.org