JAMES RALEIGH ROBERTS

James Raleigh Roberts of Norton, Virginia, died peacefully in Richmond, Virginia on March 27, 2022. He was 90 years old.

He is survived by four children, Suzanne Hall, Judith Orell, John Roberts and Catherine Henson; seven grandchildren; ten great-grandchildren; and one great-great-grandchild.

He was preceded in death by his wife of 51 years, Joyce Marie Reilly Roberts, in 2005, and his youngest daughter, Amanda Roberts, in 2013.

James was born in 1931 to Lola Victoria Sargent Roberts and Grover Cleveland Roberts in their home on Powell River, Virginia, near Norton. He graduated from Norton High School in 1950 and soon after joined the U.S. Air Force, serving honorably for 20 years and retiring with the rank of Major. As a radar-navigator on the B-52 he supported the nation’s nuclear deterrent with the Strategic Air Command and flew more than 170 combat missions over Vietnam. Early in his Air Force career he met and married Joyce Marie Reilly of Boston, Massachusetts. On his retirement from active duty, he returned to Powell River with Joyce and their five children, where he lived until 2019, not 100 yards from the house where he was born.
An autodidact, James was well-read and highly intelligent, filling his house with books and instilling in his children a spirit of inquiry and independent thought. He was a talented illustrator and cartoonist, and he wrote many poems, a collection of which is being gathered by his daughter for publication.
His ashes will be interred this summer on a yet-to-be-determined date in the Gardner Cemetery on Powell’s River. A memorial service will be held closer to that time in Norton.