Ryan Walsh
What a loss. I just heard about this. I was and still am a huge fan of Roy's. On the way back to New Orleans from camping trips on the Northshore, I visited Roy many times in his shop. He was a wealth of information on a variety of things, including the history of the Carrollton neighborhood of New Orleans, where he'd lived many decades ago, as well as a lifelong passion of mine: pocketknives. I enjoyed his expertise on pocketknives made by Swiss Army, Old Timer, Case. He knew so much, including names of discontinued models, and even mentioned a scene from the movie Cisco Pike in which Kris Kristopherson uses a Swiss knife as a prop. I made sure to say hello also when Columbia Street became a movie set I worked on, and Roy later loved to tell how a certain famous actor had come in around that time and bought a bow. Roy sent recommendations to knife manufacturers when he saw something about a product that could be improved. According to Roy, shortly after a recommendation of his, the Victorinox Classic, probably one of the bestselling pocketknives ever, started to feature a small screwdriver at the tip of the nail file; and that's still how it's made today. When I think of an immersive, interesting experience of walking into a cool shop in Louisiana and talking to a total character of a shopowner, that was Roy. My deep condolences to his family. Like many people who met him, I will miss this man.
-Ryan Walsh
