Roy L. DeVries

Roy L. DeVries, of Garden City and Westhampton Beach, died on March 19, 2020.  He was 89 years old.  He grew up in Bay Ridge and attended PS 185 and Brooklyn Technical High School.  Roy started his career selling stickers and parlayed that into a successful career in toy industry advertising sales.  He helped launch a magazine called Toy & Hobby World in the early sixties.  Ever the entrepreneur, Roy went into mergers and acquisitions with Victor Niederhoffer to buy toy companies.  He developed games like Perfection and opened his own game company, Just Games, in 1978.  Notably, Roy produced the first murder-mystery party game and a best-selling board game, the Orient Express Mystery Detective Game.

He met his amazing wife, Dee, in 1960 at a brokerage house.  They fell in love and were married for 58 wonderful years.  They had two children, Joy (married to John Heinze) and Linda (married to Ronald Howarth), and have four grandchildren, Justin, Dillon, Kevin, and Jillian.  They will all miss him dearly.

Roy's passionate love of the beach was unsurpassed.  In the seventies, Roy and six other members of the Swordfish Beach Club purchased the club.  It is broadly felt that these seven men saved the club and made it what it is today – a place where memories and friends are made for a lifetime.  Roy loved a sunny beach day – watching the waves, riding his boogie board, walking the beach, or just talking to his friends at the shoreline about the stock market or current affairs.  Always a gentleman, he was enthusiastic, relentlessly positive, smiling, saying hello, and kidding around.  Roy will be remembered for wearing his hat, a yellow t-shirt, board shorts, and a Swordfish white towel around his neck.

A life-long fan of the Knicks, Roy loved basketball and hockey.  Whether in the racetrack stands at Belmont and Aqueduct or in front of the TV, he was an avid thoroughbred handicapper.  Race after race, he would loudly cheer the jockey or the horse’s number like he was trackside.  Roy loved watching tennis, especially the US Open, and playing doubles with good friends.  He always had the daily newspaper in-hand.

Roy was buried in a private family ceremony at Westhampton Cemetery.

There will be a Memorial Service this summer at the Swordfish Beach Club.

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