James Wiley Price

I never met Wiley, but I sure wish I had. What an amazing obituary and he sounds like a ton of fun to be around.

1. Wiley was one of the best cooks I ever met.
2. We had a very loud party in Wiley's basement to raise money to buy a carpet and pad for the floor at the O'Berry Hospital so the little kids would be safe while learning to use the walker training device. I had an amplifier hum in my head for days.
3. We were on a field trip to a NASA wind tunnel near Hampton Roads, VA, and I drove my I.D.19 Citroen with Wiley, Andy Leager and a graduate student with a Master's in engineering. I drove back along the Outer Banks and we ran out of beach while the tide was coming in. We were stuck in the ocean near Corolla. Wiley and I were pushing; Leager drove, and the engineering guy with the Master's was catatonic in the fetal position against a dune. Wiley found a section of telephone pole and he and I poled the car back up the beach. We collected the engineering guy and drove the car over the dune to the sand road. The back left tire was shredded but that car, put in the high position, would drive with three wheels. In 15-20 miles we roused from sleep the owner of a gas station who came down, sold us a 16" truck tire, mounted it and we made it back to Raleigh about 3 a.m. I'm convinced we couldn't have done it without Wiley's strong will. The engineering guy quit the School of Design and was never heard from again.