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Author: Lace_Lynch
Surnames: Slate
Classification: obituary
Message Board URL:
http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.carney/1674/mb.ashx
Message Board Post:
William "Bill" James Carney was a gentle and funny man who laughed and worked
hard, told silly jokes and loved his family. His dry sense of humor set the tone for
family dinners and gatherings for decades.
The native of Wheeling, West Virginia, died Sept 7, 2010 at the age of 87.
Bill embraced the present and the past, often recalling how in 1937 at the first Boy Scout
Jamboree he took a double exposure picture of President Franklin Roosevelt in a
motorcade.
In high school, he wrote a poem in anticipation of an Ohio River flood. Years later, he
would recite it: ``The people are cleaning their cellars out, a flood is coming, there is
no doubt.'
Even though he had no memory of his own father, who died when he was three, he was a
father and grandfather for the ages.
He served stateside as a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from 1943 to
1946 during World War II.
Bill met Madge Slate, an Army nurse, while the two of them were serving their country.
They were married in 1946 and had three children, Patsy, James and Ralph.
At family gatherings, he would turn to Madge and ask no one in particular, ``isn't she
beautiful?'
Having received his bachelors, masters and doctorate degrees in chemical engineering from
West Virginia University, he worked for the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., in Akron, Ohio
for 34 years, retiring in 1987 as manager of polyester research.
He was proud to be among the first PhD chemical engineers hired by the company.
He liked to explain thermodynamics and heat transfer to family members, and loved going to
work at what he called ``my science place.'
He amused himself and others by coming up with hilarious inventions. He called one of them
a mawn-lower a contraption for keeping grass short. Rather than cutting the lawn, this
machine, which only existed in his mind, would lower the lawn so that no cutting was
necessary.
He loved spending time with his children and grandchildren and hearing of their
adventures.
He loved music, especially big band classics and Broadway show tunes, Cleveland sports, a
good vodka on ice, a cold beer, the game of golf and the Mountaineers of WVU.
He cried with happiness when he went to his only World Series game in 1995 and the
Cleveland Indians won the game.
Even while struggling with Parkinson's disease and dementia the last few years, Bill
could still easily rattle off punch lines of his favorite jokes, including this: ``Do you
have anything to stop this coffin?'
He lost two big loves of his life in the 1990s. His wife of 49 years, Madge, died in 1995,
of lung cancer, and his daughter, Patsy Carney Hughes, died two years later of breast
cancer.
Loved ones will forever be thankful for their ``Papaw.'
He is survived by sons and daughters-in-law, James and Katie Byard Carney of Akron, Ohio,
Ralph Carney and Deena Zacharin of San Francisco; grandchildren, Will Carney and Heather
Blair of Peninsula, Ohio, Patrick Carney and Emily Ward, of New York City, N.Y., Michael
Carney and Joanna Grant of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Hedda Carney of San Francisco; and
daughter-in-law Mary Buckley Stormer of Akron, Ohio her husband Barry and their son Barry
Jr.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Rockynol Retirement
Community, 1150 West Market St., Akron, Ohio, 44313, where Bill lived for more than two
years and where the entire staff treated him with love, respect and dignity. Please
specify either the Employee Christmas Fund or the Life Care Program when making a
donation.
In particular, Bill's family wishes to thank the staff in the West Tower and at the
Ledges for their professionalism, tenderness and never-ending support, as well as the
staff of Senior Independence Hospice.
Calling hours will be from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept 9, 2010 at the Billow FAIRLAWN
Chapel, 85 North Miller Road, Fairlawn, Ohio. Funeral service will be at 10 a.m. Friday at
the funeral home.
Entombment at Rose Hill Burial Park. (Billow FAIRLAWN Chapel)
Published in Akron Beacon Journal on September 9, 2010
Summit County, Ohio
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