Leslie Floyd Roe, aka Chip Roe, aka Chipper, aka Slayer of mice, died Sunday evening, December 8th, 2019, at his home in Gaston. Actually, no one is sure exactly when he died, since he wasn’t returning calls for two weeks and he lived out in the sticks. It was probably a few days or maybe a week before. But he was definitely found on December 8th, 2019, after his son Christopher heroically kicked the door in (even though Chip’s other son, Zach, warned Christopher that doing so would, “F**k up his knee”). The late Chip Roe - late in both the sense that he’s not with us anymore, and the sense that he was always late (a trait he lovingly passed on to his aforementioned sons) - was born September 12, 1954 in Poughkeepsie, NY, son of the beloved Jean (Ackerman) Roe and some guy no one remembers. He grew up in the area, smoking cigars on rooftops with his dog, and winning pretty much every golf tournament they allowed young people to play (he also kicked ass at basketball, a fact that he rarely mentioned, but didn’t have to if you ever saw him play). On August 7th, 1977, he somehow talked his high school sweetheart, Linda LaFalce into marrying him, and they quickly fled that one-horse town for the flashy metropolis that was Gilbert, Arizona. There, Chip made a living hanging drywall while he went to Arizona State to finish his bachelor’s degree. When he wasn’t working, he was playing guitar and chasing off creeps in pickup trucks, pumpkin smashers, or anyone who bothered him. He also helped build his wife’s parents a badass house that was THE PLACE TO BE for 30 some years. In 1990, after both he and his wife’s families had migrated to the area, almost in their entirety, Chip fled town with Linda and their two sons, eventually settling down in Portland, Oregon. A few years later, he and Linda got divorced, because we all make mistakes, and eventually, in 2001, he married his second wife, Ellen, only 21 years his junior. They had two awesome children, Jake and Gena, both of whom have inherited their father’s athleticism, height, and good heart. In 2016, he retired from USG (The company that makes sheetrock) and began drinking more heavily than usual. He slowly communicated less and less with his children and became more and more of a hermit, in what we can only assume was a sort of alcohol induced dementia. Even so, whenever he did see them, his love for his children was always palpable, never once letting an opportunity to tell them he loved them and was proud of them pass him by. He will be remembered by his four children, his two ex-wives, their families, his sisters, nieces and nephews, and anyone else who ever got to know him as a genuine, thoughtful, principled, funny, loving, charismatic, sometimes terrifying, and very, very tall guy.