Donald Boyce was an important and generous craftsman for GUUF. He helped w/ Building and Grounds and many individual members’ projects. (“What you do for money is how you make a living, what you give away is how you make a life”).

Don was born in San Francisco on 4/19/41.  Born of second generation Scottish parents (who, unbeknownst to Don until I did his genealogy, had come from Belfast, Ireland – so not so Scottish after-all), therefore more my kind of people, hence the eventual matrimonial understanding between us.  Don was the first born and had four siblings, three brothers (Dennis, Hugh, Gerald) and one sister, Christine.  His brother Dennis is the only surviving sibling.   Don’s first marriage was to Patricia Ayers, and that marriage produced two children, Tracy and Ellie.  He has five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Don’s father was trained as an electrician by grandpa Boyce, so Don’s trade came to him like feeding candy to a baby.  He said he started holding the tools and learning before age 3.  He became very well known as an extremely honest, trustworthy and hard working “perfecfionist” for  both residential and commercial structures, who could easily under-bill or simply forget to bill the client at all, with not much guilt.  He did, however, manage to make enough money to provide a fairly decent living for us.  

Accepting a five-year work contract, we relocated from Marin County, CA to Ft. Lauderdale,  FL in late 1999, where Don was in charge of all electrical maintenance on the Port Everglades cargo cranes managed by GFC Consultants.  Just six months short of the termination of his five year contract, hurricane Wilma blew in, and pretty much blew our house away.  Don toughed it out for another six months while I went back and forth looking high and low for higher and drier ground.  Through friends who had homes in both Florida and Greenville, we found ourselves happily making the move up north in 2006.  Don “retired” when we arrived, but having found GUUF as our spiritual home (never having had one before), it didn’t take long for people to discover Don’s talent and his need to not stop working at the only thing that really made him happy – holding onto and using his tools of the trade. 

He reluctantly let go of his tools of the trade, but not his mental ability to advise as to how to apply them, in early 2023, when his vascular dementia he had been living with as a diagnosis since 2016, took over and presented his final “retirement” on May 9, 2024.  Don was the nicest, kindest man a woman could ever be privileged to spend 26 years with (Donna Goethe’s words).