Category: 1950s

Dr. John Hayden Hollingsworth, M.D. died on Monday, April 13, 2026 in Roanoke, Virginia.

Hayden was born on June 1, 1936 to Dr. Rev. Aaron Hayden Hollingsworth, Jr. and Merris Everett Hollingsworth. When he was only a few months old, his family relocated to Farmville, Virginia where Hayden’s father accepted the call to Farmville Presbyterian Church. In 1942, his family relocated again, this time settling in Roanoke where his father accepted the call to Second Presbyterian Church.

Hayden spent his school days at Crystal Spring Elementary, Lee Junior High, and Jefferson High School. He would be the first to tell you he was a lackluster student throughout these years, directing much of his energy towards pursuits outside of the classroom.

During his freshman year at Davidson College, Hayden found his footing academically, studying pre-med and graduating in 1958. He received his M.D. degree from Emory University, followed by an Internship in Internal Medicine at the University of Virginia Hospital. In 1963, a draft notice from the U.S. Army interrupted his Internship. With his young family, Hayden spent two years stationed in Bad Kissingen, West Germany, as an Officer with the 30th Medical Brigade. On his return to the U.S. in 1965, Hayden finished a Residency in Internal Medicine and completed a Fellowship in Cardiology at the University of Virginia Hospital.

In 1969, Hayden moved with his family to Roanoke, where he joined a practice of internists. In 1975, Hayden partnered with his friend and colleague, Dr. Philip Shiner, M.D., to establish Consultants in Cardiology, the first practice in Southwest Virginia devoted exclusively to cardiac care. In the ensuing years, this practice grew to serve patients from surrounding states including West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina.

Hayden truly loved his patients and cared deeply for their welfare. Every year at Christmas, his patients returned this love in kind with cards, letters, and an assortment of gifts that would overwhelm the office. Hayden simply said these relationships were the reason he became a physician.

Hayden became one of the driving forces behind heart surgery and advances in cardiology in the Roanoke Valley. He chaired the committee that researched the need for, and eventually brought, cardiac surgery to Roanoke. He served as a Hospital Medical Staff Delegate to the American Medical Association and served as Governor of the Virginia Chapter of the American College of Cardiology. In 1999, he received the “Heart of Gold” Award from the Roanoke Valley Division of the American Heart Association for his contributions to the health and well being of the community.

Shortly before his retirement in 1996, an article from the Roanoke Times reported “Almost as soon as the letter went out announcing Dr. J. Hayden Hollingsworth’s career change last month, the return calls and letters started pouring in . . . Hundreds of patients responded with cards, letters and phone calls – many of them tearful.” The article goes on to say that after his secretary stacked 50 medical charts on his desk, Hayden spent “all day Saturday and Sunday talking to fretful patients, reassuring them they’d be okay without him – and reassuring them that he’d be okay without the practice of medicine.”

As a lifelong member of Second Presbyterian Church, Hayden served as an Elder as well as a Sunday School teacher for many years. He was a member of the Founding Board of Roanoke Area Ministries and served on multiple other boards including the American Red Cross and the United Way.

Following his retirement from the practice of medicine, Hayden turned his boundless energy to his many other talents. He worked in Photography and as a Lecturer, Novelist, Poet, Bible Teacher, Theater Reader, and Story Teller. He also wrote a weekly column for the Roanoke Star Sentinel for a number of years.

Hayden will be remembered for the deep love he had for his family, the care and compassion he brought to the practice of medicine, the dear friendships he cultivated and held close to his heart, his sharp mind and quick wit, and the many ways his creative works were beautiful expressions of his warm and loving spirit.

Hayden was preceded in death by his parents, Aaron Hayden Hollingsworth and Merris Everett Hollingsworth; his daughter, Merris Anthony Hollingsworth; his sister, Marian Hollingsworth Cusac; and his niece, Sarah Elizabeth Cusac. He also was preceded in death by his former wife, Patricia Cox Hollingsworth, and her son, Tazewell Brown.

He is survived by daughter, Betsy Lee, and son-in-law, Lai Lee, their children, Cassandra Graham (Ryan), Christine Lee (Ben), Katherine Lee (Kevin), Margaret Salinas (Joshua), and their grandchildren, Ollie Gregory, Merris Gregory, Joseph Graham, and Edison Graham; daughter, Jennifer Hollingsworth-Austin and son-in-law, Holton Austin, and their children, Declan Austin and Connor Austin; daughter-in-law, Mary Post; cousin, Doris Tippens; and nephew, Michael Cusac. He also is survived by his close companion, Johanna Henretta; his first wife and mother of his children, Julianne Lunsford Hollingsworth; and his step-daughters, Macon Fox (Tania) and Suzanne Brown (Eddie).

The family would like to thank the exceptional staff at Brandon Oaks Assisted Living and Brandon Oaks Nursing and Rehab for their skilled and loving care over the past two years.

There will be a Celebration of Life at Second Presbyterian Church in Roanoke on Friday, May 8 at 11 am, followed by a reception in the Fellowship Hall. A livestream of the service will be available at spres.org/worship/livestream.

The family asks that memorials be made to Second Presbyterian Church or to your charity of choice.

James David Deck, medical school professor, church leader, father, lover of music, world traveler, and family historian, passed away on April 2, 2026 in Charlottesville, VA. He was 95 years old.

Born November 6, 1930, David (who never used his given first name) grew up in East Point, Ga., the son of Lucius Linton Deck, an Army intelligence officer and a high school principal and teacher, and Rosalie Wootten Deck, a homemaker and choir director. As a youngster during the Depression and WWII, David enjoyed raising rabbits, delivering a newspaper route, reading voluminously, singing in the church choir, and listening to his grandmother’s family stories.

David graduated from East Point’s Russell High School and entered Davidson College in the fall of 1947 when he was 16 years old. He majored in biology, toured with the college chorus, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1951. After Davidson, he attended Princeton University on a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship and studied biology in the lab of Dr. Elmer G. Butler. His research at Princeton focused on the behavior of innervated cells associated with limb regeneration in amphibians. He received his PhD from Princeton in 1954 and was selected to the Sigma Xi scientific research honor society.

In the fall of 1954, Dr. Deck began a 46-year teaching career in the Department of Anatomy (later Cell Biology) at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. In late October of that year, Dr. Deck was encouraged by a former Davidson classmate to take a blind date, Pauline “Polly” Phelps of Abingdon, VA, to the UVa-UNC football game. One of the weekly letters that he wrote home to his parents establishes that he did not really want to go on this blind date, but it changed the course of his life. After a whirlwind romance and engagement, David and Polly were married in August 1955. For many years afterward, they attended the UVa-UNC football game in fond remembrance of their first date. They were married for 69 years before her death in August 2024.

David’s long association with the University of Virginia was briefly paused for one year in the mid-1960s while he attended Harvard University for a postdoctoral fellowship in cell biology with Dr. Betty Hay.

In his years at UVa, he taught anatomy and histology to over 6,000 first-year UVa medical school students. He also hauled scores of buckets of salamander eggs into his home’s basement and garage for his research projects, sometimes enlisting his children to collect these eggs from the creek near their house. He worked with and advised numbers of graduate students and also studied and published research with Mano Thubrikar and Stanton Nolan on structures of the aortic valve and heart tissues. At UVa, Dr. Deck received several Excellence in Teaching awards from the students and faculty and, in recognition of his scholastic work and service to the University, he was selected to become a member of UVa’s Raven Society.

David and Polly were members of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville for over 65 years. He found purposeful meaning through his involvement in the life of Westminster, participating in church life as a leader and guiding voice. He sang in the choir for over 60 years and served at every level of leadership, including several minister search committees. Along with other church leaders, David and Polly established the church’s Westminster Lectureship series in 2007, a seminar series addressing topics in contemporary theology.

Making music was one of the joys of David’s life. This began in youth church choirs and continued through his travels with the men’s chorus at Davidson College. He not only was a cornerstone of the tenor section of the Westminster Church choir, but he also sang in the then-nascent Charlottesville Oratorio Society. He served as President of the Oratorio Society in the late 1970s and was one of the founders of the Charlottesville Youth Orchestra (now the seven-county Youth Orchestras of Central Virginia) in 1978.

David’s friends and family remember his skills at word games (with his cryptic handwritten game notes), his amazing ability to fix anything mechanical, and his thoughtful and steady care of his friends and neighbors in times of crisis and illness.

His children fondly remember car trips ranging from weekend outings to month-long car camping adventures across the United States and Canada. He and Polly continued tent camping with friends into their 50s and 60s, and even decided to take a small tent and trunk of supplies to camp in Europe when their kids were in college.

David’s greatest joy was being a father. He and Polly worked tirelessly to ensure their children and grandchildren encountered the world with inquisitive minds and loving and empathetic hearts. For this, his children are boundlessly grateful.

J. David Deck is survived by sons, J. David Deck, Jr. (Patricia) of Richmond, Va. and Stewart L. Deck (Elizabeth) of Arlington, Mass.; and his daughter, Emily Deck Harrill of Columbia, S.C. He was preceded in death by his wife, Polly Deck; his daughter, Sarah Deck Stevens of Santa Fe, N.M.; his brother, Lucius Linton Deck, Jr.; and his parents.

He had eight grandchildren and two great-grandsons.

The family would particularly like to thank David’s caregivers, Joan and Diana Woodfolk, Wanda Jones, Tarah Washington, Pat Anderson, and Jackie Jackson. This remarkable group of women worked to ensure David and his family have been cared for with loving kindness in the two years since Polly’s death. For this exceptional care, David’s family is extremely thankful.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. on August 15, 2026, at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 190 Rugby Road, Charlottesville. Memorials may be made to Westminster Church’s Lectureship series, the Youth Orchestras of Central Virginia, or a charity of one’s choice.

Howard Jackson “Jack” Bivins, Jr., 91, of Haddock, Georgia, passed away on Saturday, March 21, 2026. A graveside service will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 25, 2026, at Riverside Cemetery.

Son of the late Howard Jackson Bivins, Sr. and Katherine Armstrong Bivins, Jack was born in Macon, Georgia on July 10, 1934. He graduated from Lanier High School and Davidson College. After college, he proudly served his country in the Un​​⁠‍ited States Navy.

Jack spent his professional career in the banking industry, where he served as a trust officer. In his free time, he enjoyed camping and had a passion for automobile racing.

Jack is survived by his wife of 41years, Deanna Bivins of Haddock, Georgia; daughters, Melissa Bivins (Tina Whittier) of Richmond Hill, Georgia and Marsha Dennard (Ted) of Haddock, Georgia; grandchildren, Grant Barrett and Ruby B. Horne; brother, Guy A. Bivins; and sister, Charlotte Bivins Knight.

In addition to his parents, Jack was preceded in death by his brother, Dr. Ben L. Bivins.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to First Presbyterian Church of Milledgevile, 210 S Wayne St, Milledgeville, GA 31061.

Please visit www.hartsmort.com to express condolences.

Hart’s Jones County Chapel, Hart’s Mortuary and Cremation Center, 307 Pecan Lane, Gray, GA 31032 has charge of the arrangements.

Herb Kincey was an outdoorsman, teacher, and a pillar of the Santa Fe community. Over his more than 50 years in the city, he helped hundreds find their way by helping to found the St. Johns College Search and Rescue Team and opening his home to anyone who needed a place to live. Throughout his life, he was kind, thoughtful, and caring.

Herb, son of Sara Bayne Kincey, and Herbert Furniss (Mike) Kincey, and younger brother of Sara Kincey Jones (all now deceased), was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1934 and grew up in the Eastover neighborhood, where he was known as Sonny. His early schooling included Eastover Elementary and Alexander Graham Bell Junior High. He then attended Woodberry Forest School outside Orange, Virginia, for four years, during which he played football, wrestled, and served as a prefect his senior year (1952-53).

After a stint at Davidson College, Herb attended the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, graduating in 1959 with a degree in English Literature. He pledged the N.C. Theta chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity (SAE) at Davidson in 1953 and continued his fraternity involvement with the N.C XI Chapter of SAE at UNC, including serving as chapter president in 1959. Some additional time during those years was spent at Mars Hill University and Indiana University.

Herb’s outdoor career began in 1961 while working for 3 years at Camps Sequoyah & Tsali (no longer in existence) in the western North Carolina mountains, holding several staff positions there, eventually including assistant director. From Camp Sequoyah, Herb moved on in 1964 to spend 6 years as a staff member at newly opened Outward Bound schools in the Colorado Rockies and in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. During this time, he also briefly served on the staff of two Outward Bound schools in Great Britain: The Eskdale Mountain School in northern England and the Aber Dovey School on the coast of Wales. This trip also included a month long stay at the British Army Outward Bound School outside Kristiansand, Norway.

In 1971, 2 years after relocating from North Carolina to Santa Fe, Herb opened a home-based outdoor shop, Peak & Plain Outfitters, specializing in backpacking, climbing, survival, and technical rescue gear. Also in 1971, Herb attended the first EMT course taught in New Mexico and then went on to teach EMT, First Responder, and CPR courses until 1994. During this period, both the Los Alamos National Lab and the U.S. Customs Aviation Unit, Western Branch, hired Herb to teach wilderness survival courses.

For 37 years, Herb was a member of the St. Johns College Search and Rescue Team, Santa Fe, which he helped found in 1971. In the early days, he served as a training officer for the team. In addition, Herb was also an active member of the New Mexico Civil Air Patrol for forty years. He held many staff positions during that time and participated in numerous CAP air search and rescue missions across the state, going back to the days when there were few emergency locator transmitters installed in private aircraft, making searches more difficult and lengthier. Other organizations with which Herb was affiliated over the years included: the Boy Scouts of America, Los Alamos Mountaineers, American Alpine Club, Sierra Club, New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, Appalachian Mountain Club, AMC Hetmans’ Association, Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce, the Santa Fe Council on International Relations, the Wilderness Medical Society, Outward Bound, and Camps Sequoyah & Tsali.

In the nineteen seventies, eighties, and nineties, Herb made several climbing trips with St. Johns College students and other friends to the 3 big Mexican volcanoes: Popocatepetl (now closed to climbers) Iztaccihuatl, and El Pico de Orizaba, Orizaba being the highest at about 18,800 ft. In more recent years, he engaged in less physically demanding activities, visiting countries in various parts of the world, mostly with his good friend and traveling pal, Carmel Davis.

Since about 2005 Herb’s outdoor activities and foreign travel were limited due to ongoing medical problems. However, in addition to looking after Skeeter, a beautiful female Lab mix he owned jointly with close friend, Colin Willis, Herb also spent time reading a wide variety of books, writing memoirs, and staying in touch with old and new friends, mostly thanks to Facebook. Herb was a strong believer in a brief passage from the poem, Ulysses, written by Alfred Lord Tennyson: “I am a part of all that I have met”.

Although the members of Herb’s immediate family have all passed on, he had two nieces: Lane Morgan (husband Billy,) in Texas with 3 adult children; and Lyra Gapper (partner Raul), in South Carolina with 2 adult children; as well as several cousins and other relatives, mostly living in and around Selma, Alabama.

At Herb’s request, there will be no formal funeral service. There will be a memorial service at Rivera Funeral Home 417 Rodeo Rd. in Santa Fe, N.M. on April 9, 2026, at 2pm. He asks that some of his ashes be scattered in the mountains east of Santa Fe by friends, and the remainder be placed in the Kincey burial plot located in Charlotte. Herb also recommends readers go climb a mountain, take in the full moon as it rises over Atalaya Peak, explore a cave, run a river, adopt a pet, dance the night away, or head off somewhere exotic on a sailing adventure. Herb once said, “It’s a big old world out there just waiting to be explored. Do it while you are young and strong.”

Donations may be made in Herb’s memory to St. John’s College Advancement, PO Box 715905, Philadelphia, PA 19171-5905; to Woodberry Forest School, 898 Woodberry Forest Road, Woodberry Forest, VA 20000; to Sigma Alpha Epsilon Foundation, P.O. Box 4543, Carol Stream, Il 60197-