08/08/2025
Roy Edward Russell
December 31, 1926 – August 6, 2025
Roy Edward Russell, a man of wit, quiet genius, and deep-rooted Appalachian creativity, passed away peacefully among family on Fenwick Mountain - into the arms of his beloved Heavenly Father. He was 98 years old.
Born on New Year’s Eve in 1926 to Hobert and Desta Russell, Roy grew up on a farm tucked into the wild beauty of Fenwick Mountain, West Virginia. He and his siblings walked dirt roads and crossed fields in winter to get to the Thorny K**b Schoolhouse, where his Aunt Stella was also his teacher until the eighth grade. That same road, just off Airport Hill, is the one Roy would return to later in life—choosing to live out his years among the cliffs and forests of his childhood in a home he designed, built, and filled with memories.
Roy graduated from Richwood High School in 1943, and with a keen mind and deep curiosity about the natural world, he enrolled at West Virginia Tech in Montgomery to study biology. His dream at the time was to become a biology teacher, but the classroom never quite fit his restless intellect. Then, as the world shifted in the final chapters of World War II, Roy was drafted into the U.S. Army and sent toward Japan. He was on the ship overseas when the war came to an end. He completed basic training and served honorably, returning home with a renewed sense of purpose.
After the war, Roy resumed his education and graduated college before beginning his career with the West Virginia Department of Health. In 1957, he moved to Alexandria, Virginia, transferring to the Virginia Health Department, where he worked in a state laboratory performing blood tests and food inspections. Though he never drove a car—never even held a driver’s license—Roy navigated the world with ease and independence, commuting by bus and train, walking city blocks, and making his way wherever he wanted to go.
He lived modestly but with great freedom—walking to work, bowling with coworkers, and painting in oil with increasing passion. His home was filled with color, stories, and half-finished canvases. He studied philosophy, psychology, and sociology, read widely, and engaged deeply with questions of human consciousness. He never married.
In 1979, following the death of his father, Roy returned to West Virginia. With his usual quiet determination and great attention to detail, he began building a home on his granddad’s farm—right between the two rock cliffs he had once played on as a boy. Alongside his brother Doy and other family members, he crafted what became one of West Virginia’s architectural gems: a modern two-story house nestled into the landscape, built from memory and imagination. Before construction began, he even sculpted a clay model of the house that could fit in the palm of his hand. He stored all the receipts from building it under his bed; a testament to his resourcefulness and deep care for the process.
His cliff house became a haven of creativity. It had a stone fireplace he built himself from nearby rock on his boyhood farm, a darkroom for developing his beautiful black-and-white photographs, a personal library filled with books, and a wide deck overlooking the hills. He painted from that deck, often capturing the ever-changing light of the mountains he loved.
Roy was a documentarian of daily life. His photographs of Nicholas County and his family reveal a deep intimacy with the land and people. He had a particular fondness for double exposures—often posing as both subjects in a single frame, capturing himself and his father in fictional conversations, creating visual jokes and gentle commentary on time and memory. His humor was subtle, always intelligent, and often surprising. He was the author of the 1987 book Life, Mind and Laughter: A Theory of Laughter, a subject he viewed with both seriousness and delight.
In retirement, Roy became more prolific as an artist and builder. He helped construct homes for family members and laid stone walls with precision and grace. At his sister Ola’s house, he built a rock wall by hand. He chopped his own firewood, heated his home with it, and told stories of bears knocking on his door.
Though he lived alone, Roy was never lonely. He was deeply connected to his family and the land. Every Fourth of July, relatives would gather at the cliff house for celebration. He filled every room of that house with meaning—the laundry room walls were the living cliff itself. He lived fully, freely, and with great attention to what mattered.
Roy was a thinker, a reader, a builder, a painter, a photographer, a philosopher. He was a man of precision and imagination. He took life seriously, but never himself. Until the end, he was sharp and witty, cracking jokes in his final days.
He was preceded in death by his sister Eva (Roy Taylor) and his brother Joy (Nelda Russell), whom he loved dearly and remembered often with fondness and gratitude. He is survived by his beloved sister Ola (Fred Skaggs), his brother Doy (Nancy Russell), and his sister Ina (Bill Rosenburg). His nieces, Rachel (Steve Humphrey) and Rachanda (Shawn Greene), cared for him, alongside Ola, in his final days. He leaves behind many nieces and nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews, and even great-great-nieces and nephews who will forever carry the imprint of his creativity and humor.
Roy Edward Russell left behind more than photographs and paintings; he left behind a way of seeing. A reminder that life can be lived deliberately—surrounded by books, by beauty, by stone and light and memory. That a man without a driver’s license can still go far. That a mind fed by curiosity can build more than a house—it can build a life worth remembering.
Services will be Sunday, August 10, 2025 at 2:00 PM at Simons-Coleman Funeral Home, Richwood, WV.
Friends may call on Sunday, August 10, 2025 from 12:30 pm till 2:00 pm at the Funeral Home. Interment will be in the Russell Family Cemetery, Fenwick Mt. WV