Warren Davis Ayres, Iii

Warren Davis Ayres III, breathed his last late Monday night, November 28, 2016.

A man of many skills and many nicknames to many friends, “Speck” “Fuzzy”  “Snidley”  “Sprockett” and “Smeck”, was the son of Warren D. Ayres Jr. and Jennie Mae Macleod Ayres.  Speck was born November 6, 1944.  He grew up on Riverside Drive where his grandparents also lived.  While at E.C. Glass high school, he acquired an old Model A that he “tweaked” until he got it running, but his grandmother’s car was always more reliable.

Graduating in 1962, he and three other friends put two aluminum canoes in the New River and then floated the Kanawha, and the Ohio River.  Once they made it to the Ohio River, the three men went in one canoe and turned left onto the Mississippi River reaching New Orleans on September 7th. Returning home, Speck returned to high school to do “post graduate work” before enlisting in the Navy.   He served on the U.S.S. Yosemite as a 2nd Class Petty Officer, Electronics Radar Tech until 1967.

Returning to Lynchburg, “Fuzzy” Ayres began work at Babcock and Wilcox as a Senior Electronics Technician.  He also attended and graduated from Central Virginia Community College.  There were annual forays with friends to Mardis Gras and Nags Head when you could camp on the beach as well as various other jeep or bike “outings”.  Then “Snidley” found a cabin on Abert Road, sharing rent and tight quarters with four friends.  Many stories about each other, jeeps, the goat, the outdoor shower, Edith Ann, and Warren the Cat came into being while living there.  And we all looked forward to annual New Year’s parties around fire barrels.

In 1976-7, Speck bought the old cabin on Reed Creek, and began working on it on weekends.  When he met Janice Raley in 1980, they got into a pattern of weekend and vacation time cabin building– which then became a career.  The relief from tedious chinking; reworking and building an additional cabin and endless “tweaking” on this and that, were evenings on the creek bringing laughter at stories until it hurt and the tears streamed. Speck retired in 1995, but continued to do consultation and piece work circuitry for ten more years. He married Janice on February 24, 1999, alongside Reed Creek with the Sheriff officiating.

For forty years, he and Janice built “A real log cabin”…a mountain home most of the time with only temporary power.  Whatever Speck did was exacting and done exceptionally well and he never got in a hurry.  He was generous in his help to others about mechanics or electrical advice.  His hand often twisted at his beard while the wheels of his mind smoothly turned like gears with a far off or mischievous look was always in his eyes.

He lived a full life and made a lot of people laugh and enjoy life.

The help of neighbors, Jeff and Susan Tolley, and the friends who came to visit and help Speck and Janice in the past year were an immense support that God sent to keep up a supply of firewood or cut the grass or downed trees.  It was especially great to have had two family reunions at the cabin in the last ten years.

He is survived by his wife, Janice Ayres, of Big Island; two sisters: Julie Mitchell of Midlothian and Page Cowley of New York City; a niece, Betsy McNeer of Winston Salem, N.C.; and nephews Charlie Bowler of Paso Robles, CA. and Robert Mitchell of Baltimore, MD.

There will be no service for Speck, rather he wished for a gathering of friends and family take place at a future time at the cabin. He has donated his body to science.