Roy spent more than 20 years with the Marcellus Observer. His perseverance helped the weekly newspaper survive both the Great Depression and World War II. He joined the staff in the mid-Twenties and later purchased the newspaper and ran it until late 1947 when he left to take a job as Herald-Journal and Herald American bureau chief in Norwich.

His newspaper career began when he was asked to write a column entitled "The Ghost." Soon after, he started writing his popular "Roving with Roy" column. When the Observer's owner died, Roy purchased the weekly paper and molded it into his own concept of what a newspaper should be -- an old-fashioned newspaper that chronicled the doings of the community and its residents.

Writing columns was quite a jump for the young man who was born on a farm and attended a one-room school near Kingston, Ontario, and whose first paying job was as a coronet player for a circus. Roy and his parents came to Central New York because his father, a bricklayer, thought there was more opportunity.

Working for the Marcellus paper during the Depression years, he recalled, meant bartering milk, meat and eggs for subscriptions to keep his family and the newspaper going. During World War II, Roy was determined to keep the Observer operating so he could send local service men and women news from home. It meant taking a second full-time job at the Baldwinsville arsenal, and then doing most of the newspaper jobs alone because he couldn't find enough help.

While at the Observer, Roy also started another weekly column, "Scotts Mills," which told of the mostly humorous doings of people in an imaginary village. That column later was syndicated to other weekly newspapers.