James LeRoy Moore

My Dad, Roy Moore, died in my arms three years ago today at our home in Ormond Beach, Fla. He was 97 years old and lived more than half his life in Hendersonville.
I knew Dad had written his own obituary, but it remained hidden until yesterday. It read in part:
"A native of Decatur County, Tennessee, he lived in Amarillo, Texas, Palm Beach and West Palm Beach, Florida, before relocating to Asheville in 1947 and moving to Hendersonville in 1949. He was employed by Southern Bell Telephone Company for 45 years and was Plant Manager of the Hendersonville District for 26 years before retiring in 1977. He served as president of the Hendersonville Rotary Club, president of the Greater Hendersonville Chamber of Commerce, Industrial Division, director of the Hendersonville United Way. He was past president of the Asheville Council of Telephone Pioneers of America and the Asheville District Telephone Pioneers Life Member Club, and served as state representative for Chapter 35 of the Telephone Pioneers. He was a member of the First United Methodist Church."
What Dad didn't say was that he helped establish local and long-distance telephone communications throughout western North Carolina. One of his favorite stories was about teaching the public to use their telephones to reach friends and relatives by dialing long distance. When Dad connected one disbeliever with a relative in another state, the man looked under the stage and behind the curtains to discover what he was sure was a trick.
Dad was the one telephone man poet Carl Sandburg would allow in his Flat Rock home. When CBS News legend Edward R. Murrow interviewed Sandburg on the nationally broadcast Person to Person program, Dad was the man who made that telecast happen.
An incredible wood worker, artist, and mechanic, Dad could make and fix anything. He carved intricate people and animals and made doll houses and toy telephone switchboards seemingly out of magic. He created the sleigh Santa left filled with presents in our living room and the playhouse in the woods where I spent my entire childhood. He built most of our furniture, including the color television and the boat we motored across Lake Lure in every summer. Dad won grand prize at the craftsmen's show in Asheville. He was emcee of the Rotary Club's Fourth of July Celebration at Dietz Field. He even carried the Olympic torch as it wound its way through the Western North Carolina mountains.
After retiring, Dad wrote more than 20 books. Many were about his childhood growing up in the rural South: "Take a moment to envision living on a farm surrounded by hillsides covered with timber: majestic yellow poplar, sycamore and white oak trees that provided all the shade anyone could ever want ... There was no electricity, no radio, no television, no inside plumbing nor outside for that matter ... I remember quiet times and places, and my heart aches for them."
The house Dad was born in became the centerpiece of an exhibit in the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area in Tennessee and Kentucky. The house was floated up the river from Decatur County and is now known as The Old Home Place, and is visited by thousands of people every year.
Dad's sense of humor was everlasting. Days before his death, a visiting nurse saw his UNC cap hanging on the closet door. The nurse proudly told Dad she'd gone to Duke. Dad eyeballed her and with a sly smile gently explained, "We hate Dook."
Dad is survived and greatly missed by his two Carolina alumni daughters, Kathy and Suzanne, and his beloved granddaughter Krista.