Gillespie Godfrey "Lep" Boyd Jr.

Georgetown
Gillespie "Lep" Godfrey Boyd, Jr. passed away quietly on Friday, December 19, 2025, at Prince George Health Center, Georgetown, SC.
He was born on June 15, 1938, in Camden, AR, the son of the late Gillespie Godfrey Boyd and Geraldine Price. The family returned to Georgetown that same year. Lep is survived by several brothers and sisters: Charles Price Boyd (Beverly) of Atlanta, GA, the late Samuel Harper Boyd (Kathy) of New Orleans, LA, and Geraldine Price Boyd Duff, William Herbert Boyd (Mary), Harriet Claire Boyd Jagger, and Isabelle Harper Boyd, all of Georgetown as well as many nieces and nephews.
Lep was a long-time member of Prince George Winyah Church in Georgetown where he had served as both junior and senior warden. He was also a member and past president of Winyah Indigo Society of Georgetown; a charter director and past President of the Preservation Trust of Historic Prince George Winyah Church, and a prior commissioner of the SC Commission of Pilotage for the Upper Coastal Area.
Lep attended grade school in Georgetown, surrounded by aunts, uncles and cousins. In 1950, his father accepted a promotion with International Paper Co that required the family to relocate to Natchez, MS. Now in the 7th grade, he continued his education in Natchez High School where in 1952 he played in the NHS band, starting out playing trombone, and then switching to Sousaphone. In his senior year, he joined the US Naval Reserve. He graduated high school in 1956, and attended Mississippi State University in Starkville, MS where he joined The Famous Maroon Band.
In those formative years, Lep owned more than one horse which he kept on a local farm in Natchez, and while still in high school and without his father's knowledge began taking airplane flying lessons and soon earned his pilot's license. He often took local skydiving enthusiasts up for their one-way excursion. Lep became a flight school instructor and eventually set up and owned a business as a flight examiner appointed by the FAA. Later he was a corporate pilot for a Starkville based company, flying a twin-engine King Air. In the late 1980's he became the Fixed Base Operator of Georgetown County Airport.
In grade school, Lep held impromptu play-broadcast programs in the family living room, forcing his younger siblings to sit and be the audience, honing a love for the broadcast business. In college he became involved in the local Starkville radio station as an announcer, DJ, and ad salesman and was recognized as a pioneer in modern day broadcasting in the State of Mississippi. That later led to employment by the local Laurel/Ellisville, MS TV station WDAM where he was a TV newscaster. Lep is one of the very few who was able to live all his life's dreams. In addition to broadcasting and flying, he had a lifelong dream of sailing the waterways and living on a boat.
In 1992, he purchased a 36-foot Albin Trawler in Daytona Beach, FL. As with all boat owners, the Albin was not quite right so in 1998 he began construction of a vintage type 54-foot steel hull trawler. He and master welder and boatman, John Fazio, together spent the next two years constructing the boat. Launched in 1999, this was his new home and was enjoyed by family and friends on numerous outings. The boat was eventually sold and Lep, unselfishly, moved into the family's Front Street house to assist in the care of his mother in her last years.
Funeral Services, arranged by Mayer-Etheridge Funeral Home Downtown Chapel, will be held at Prince George Winyah Church on Friday, January 2, 2026, at 11:00. Burial will immediately follow the service in the Prince George Winyah churchyard. The family is indebted to and thanks the staff and assistants of Price George Health Center for their dedicated and loving care during Lep's stay there. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorials be sent to The Preservation Trust for Historical Prince George Winyah Church, PO Box 624, Georgetown, SC 29442.