Roger W. Yonkin

On the 15th of May, 2024, I, Roger Willard Yonkin slipped my cable and sailed out into those unknown waters wherein I hope to discover our destinies. I was born April 15, 1939 in Bethel Grove, NY what then was a close-knit reliable and friendly community lost now to so-called progress. While I look forward to an adventure I sorrow to leave behind family and friends. I am the son of Helen J. Nelson and J. Willard Yonkin, parents who provided me with a safe, worry free and oh so happy childhood. They suffered deeply, concerned that their sons’ health might prevent him from a normal life. I hope they were comforted from my eventual successes. As a child I sang on WHCU, later portrayed end men in Minstrel shows, was active in the three principle American sports and assumed my adult life would be spent as a professional in at least football. Cars (hot rods) used up (too much) many teenage hours. When you see her give a special hug to my wife Barbara Holden Yonkin who took such good care of me all these years. Barb provided a life for me but for her care my health problems could have been too difficult to survive. She lived with my medical conditions nearly as much as I and never complained, never let me feel I had a disability. My sons: Robb who aided me in every little way I always knew his love and Brian who kept me centered never allowing me to show remorse. Judith (Brian) Conover Yonkin handily provided the grandchildren and thereby the great-grand children who have made my later years so much more enjoyable. These young children have kept me in the modern age. My brother Dale Nelson Yonkin and I had what I fondly recall as a childhood where we combined to attempt neatly all that society had taught us; wonders including the performance of magic, theater, music, science, history, and the rest of the known and only guessed at other-worlds. Having been born some ten years later than my cousins I regrettably missed all those early years when we could have enjoyed each other. As I aged and caught up to them in maturity, we became re-acquainted and that was a comfort. And my many dogs, mostly Labrador Retrievers, so sad they were short lived but so much love and comfort provided by those happy go lucky characters, I so hope we will be re-united. What do I say about those people I have been fortunate enough to call friends and acquaintances? I grew up in a neighborhood where there were sufficient children to play all the childhood games we now seem to only read about.  Sports, clubs, Boy Scouts, projects, games, so many it would up this column just to list them. We played together night and day, sandlot baseball, basketball at the community center, football with only barely sufficient time to eat and sleep.  My parents encouraged my friends gathering at our home, reading comics, birthday parties, cavorting. Poor dad his attempts to grow beautiful lawns were thrashed by the feet of dozens of children and young adults playing all the sports and children’s games in our yards.  Community was the thing; it formed me, filled with adults who without my noticing watched from the sidelines to insure we all remained safe and supplied those things out of necessity that made a child’s life all we could wish. I and my friends were left to wander the neighborhood and surrounding woodlands and meadows finding our individual way in a world quite different than we experience today. They never knew how much I have missed them, could we only have remained together for all our years. I have been referred to as a “Renaissance Man,” I know I have always been a dreamer. I was endowed with an inquiring mind it was quite late in life, I realized that mind had long been controlled by A.D.D. I dabbled in any little interest that came along and therefore developed too many interests: sailing, boat building, firearms, and the sports accompany them, writing, gardening, volunteering, archery and the making of all that equipment, sports, environment, community affairs, gold, skeet, cars and on and on. Like Homer Simpson, if I saw a squirrel hopping through the park, I was off after him following with laughter and general tee-heeing. At age 70 I began experiencing some sadness not unusual in men as we stop to think back and count all the deeds and life experiences, we both achieved and planned in our minds. Is there anything I can easily leave behind? Of more importance we should leave a trust of good will that can in some way improve everyone’s life. Why is it that all the knowledge we have gained is usually lost to those who could make use of it, those who inhabit the world we leave? Surely the billions of humans who had lived and learned should have been able to do more by what their ancestors taught. Why does each generation have to learn the do’s and don’ts all over again? We will eventually have the ability to repair a child’s brain at birth, to adjust it to what we have learned during previous lives? Or, would we want to? Science is obviously going to either save us or kill us. Will we live to see the sun consume our Earth, or will we by then have destroyed ourselves? Will we have drifted off into a universe already expanding to the point where at some time our ancestors will have lost the knowledge there even is a universe? And, will I be there to see it all? I hope I will be brought together with my parents; perhaps see the grandparents I so unfortunately never knew. I wish I could have lived to see the wonderful advances that will come to medicine and science, to see the transportation of the human race out to the planets and on into the stars. Fair thee well, please perform a good deed this week in my memory and “may your homes be free from tigers.”

A date for services and interment in South Hill Cemetery will be announced at a later date.