FATHER: Robert T. Riley
(1888-1969)
MOTHER: Carmen Switzer (1892-1978)
Uncle Sam served with the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division ("Old Ironsides")
81st Recon during WWII, and
considered himself the luckiest man in the army. Barely missing being killed
or injured almost became a regular occurrence for him; one story that my
dad recounts as an example was that he was sleeping
by a truck, work up, walked away, and a moment later the truck was hit by
a German shell. And like his brothers, he came back from the war without a
single injury.
Throughout the war, Uncle Sam carried a pocket "Soldier's Bible" which is now
in the possession of Aunt Isabel.
From 1956-57, Uncle Sam was the President of the 1st Armored Division Association. Here you can read a message he wrote to the Association Bulletin after being named President.
He worked for what was then the Norfolk and Western railroad headquarters offices in Roanoke; the N&W magazine gave him an obituary in one of their 1982 magazines.
He was heavily involved with the Roanoke YMCA for many years. He was a lifelong athelete who started playing basketball in his teens (once after colliding with another player as a teenager he was chased out of the gymnasium by the player's mother!), and he was the Roanoke City/County table tennis champion for thirty years. Some years after his death, my sister Jana discovered that the YMCA now has a Sam Riley Memorial Run when she ran across somebody wearing a t-shirt from the event! They also have a plaque in his honor mounted in their lobby.
Uncle Sam loved hard candy, and gave it away as gifts or at events. In fact, one of my most prominent memories of him is the tins of hard candy he gave to Jana and me every Christmas. Along with the Norfolk and Western model trains he owned, some of which he had on his fireplace mantles and most of which were taken by cousins in Georgia (along with most of the furniture).
He was the last owner of the Riley house in Roanoke. The family sold the house following his death, after it had been in the family's possession for three-and-a-half decades.
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