John William Boyle Jr., 97, took his last breath on the morning of June 11, 2016, surrounded by his family. He died from natural causes, just five weeks before his 98th birthday. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia on July 19, 1918, the first child of Ida Mae Gates Boyle and John William Boyle Sr., descendants of long-time Iowa farm families. His parents had come to Atlanta, where Mr. Boyle Sr. became steward and storekeeper at the United States Penitentiary, when it was built in 1902. He was born in the farmhouse on the prison grounds where the Boyle family lived at the time. He was preceded in death by his wife, Claudine Willowford Hopkins Boyle, his parents, his sister Edwina and his brother-in-law Dr. Bill Buchanan. He is survived by his three children, daughter Beverly and husband Harold Duckett of Knoxville, TN; son Dr. J William Boyle III and wife Karen of Kingsport, TN; and daughter Rebecca and husband Dr. Gerald Mitchell of Limestone, TN; nephew Brooke Buchanan of southern Georgia; step-great-granddaughter, Sydney Peterson of Denver, CO; many relatives in Iowa; neighbors and a host of friends at the Knoxville First Seventh-Day Adventist Church, where he was a member since arriving in the area in 1943. He was a PhD chemistry student at the University of North Carolina in 1943, with the World War II draft hot on his heels. A turn in his life came when he was called to the University of Chicago and hired on the spot as one of the first 1000 scientists for a secret mission, then sent to what was then known as the Clinton Engineering Works where the Clinton Laboratories were being finished, at a place that would later be known as Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The roads were dirt and land was still being acquired for the secured, secret city of Oak Ridge. He did research as a radiation chemist working on the Manhattan Project at the Clinton Laboratories, later to become the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After nuclear research slowed down in the 1970s, he spent the last years of his career at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory heading up the Environmental Impact Team studying the environmental conditions surrounding the nations’ nuclear installations across the United States. For him, life was binary. He loved what he did at work every day. His research mattered. He loved his family when he came home. He helped his children grow in to lives of their own. In his last years, after the loss of his wife, life became unitary. He created a new life in his mind, thinking about the beginning in the Book of Genesis. He always believed in the truth and authenticity of science. He always believed in God. For him, anyone who couldn’t believe in both just hadn’t thought about it clearly enough. He was writing a paper integrating the two schools of thought when he died. The family will receive friends from 2-4p.m. at Berry Highland Memorial Funeral Home, 5315 Kingston Pike. Pastors Don Pate and Michaela Lawrence Jeffrey will officiate at a grave-side service at Highland Memorial at 4 p.m. Pallbearers will be friends Steve Edney, Maurice Garner, Justin Jeffrey, Arnold Hudson, Scott Sheaffer, and Tim Snow. Those who wish to chose an alternate to flowers, may send memorials to It is Written, P.O. Box 6, Chattanooga, TN 37401-0006; or to Advent House Student Center at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, P.O. Box 3067, Knoxville, TN 37927.
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