Royce N. Sawyer passed away in the early morning hours on Saturday, September 20, at Holy Family Hospital in Methuen. He was 88 years old. He is survived by his life partner Julie Christo, son Kenneth Sawyer, daughter-in-law Beth Sawyer, and grandsons Ryan and his wife, Kate of Austin, Texas: and Kevin Sawyer and his wife, Dianna, of Medford. He is also remembered by the families of his two deceased brothers, Herbert and Harold, and his sister, Pauline, who is recently deceased.
He leaves behind a vibrant legacy: accomplished long-distance runner, respected electrical engineer, and a veteran of World War II with the United States Army.
A warm-hearted, generous, and soft-spoken man, Royce always put other people’s needs before his own. He loved spending time with Julie and he found happiness and contentment in simple pleasures like a glass of ice cold ginger ale. Citizens band (CB) radio, juicing fruits and vegetables, and contemplating nature were among his favorite pastimes. He spent much of his time with his sister Pauline. For many years, they shared a home on a wooded lot on the waterfront of Lake Maspenock in Hopkinton.
This lakeside home was only ten minutes by car to the Boston Marathon starting line. Royce himself clocked thousands of hours training for a constant calendar of races. He was equally at ease completing 26.2 miles or a weekend fun run with the North Medford Running Club. His personal record for finishing a marathon fell well below the three-hour mark—an accomplishment that can only be claimed by two percent of all marathoners.
While training, Royce was often the only runner on the road. He’d run for hours down long stretches of road without ever passing another runner. An appreciation for a quiet, reflective life was always with him: As a young boy, he earned money through a morning paper route that took him and his bicycle on a 20-mile loop around Boston. As a teen-ager, he worked as a pinsetter at a local bowling alley, manually, resetting pins after each frame.
Royce voluntarily repeated the ninth grade in order to learn Electrical Engineering at a vocational school. His first post was with the Pentagon. The strict dress code and copious rules and regulations disagreed with him, so he petitioned for a reassignment to a satellite office nearby where the atmosphere was more informal and cordial. His boss did not make him wear a tie.
Electrical Engineering positioned him front and center at the dawn of the computer age. During this early time, when computers were housed across several rooms, Royce had to crawl on his hands and knees to enter the computer in order to change a program or line of code. He used a soldering iron instead of a keyboard and mouse to make the necessary adjustments in the Computer Program.
In addition to his own accomplishments, Royce also took great pride in his extended family. He was pleased to be present at the weddings of his two grandsons, Ryan and Kevin, to their wives, Kate (Cooper) Sawyer and Dianna (Calareso) Sawyer. In his last decade he compiled all of the necessary paperwork to officially trace his family’s lineage back to the Mayflower pilgrims. He did the research by hand without the aid of genealogy websites. In fact, he rarely used a computer at all. He probably had had enough of the insides of computers for one lifetime.
The nursing staff that cared for him in his final days at Holy Family often remarked on his gentle and good-natured spirit, saying he was one of the sweetest men they had ever met. We will all miss him dearly.
A graveside service will be held in The Gardens at Gethsemane Cemetery, 670 Baker St., WEST ROXBURY, Saturday, September 27 at 10:00am. Relatives and friends kindly invited. Donations may be made in Royce’s memory to the American Heart Association, 300 5th Ave., Suite 6, Waltham, MA 02451-8750.