news-record.com

WHITSETT — Bobby Lee Taylor had a big heart. That’s how friends, family and customers remembered the retired Greensboro fireman Sunday.

“I hate this,” said Greg Vance as he stood outside Taylor’s Service, a country store on N.C. 61 south of Whitsett, trying to make sense of what had occurred there the night before. “I just can’t believe it happened. He would help anybody.”

Vance and others say Taylor would have given anything he had to someone in need. All they had to do was ask.

But late Saturday night, somebody didn’t ask. They took — his money and his life.

As Taylor, 69, lay dying behind the counter of the cinder-block store he had operated for 20 years, his killer made off with his cash register.

Friends and family said Taylor, a burly man who wore his white hair in a crew cut, had been shot to death, but Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes would not confirm those reports.

“We are not discussing anything about the condition of the body or the cause of death because we just don’t know,” Barnes said Sunday night. “We will not know what the cause of death is until we get something back from the medical examiner.”

Barnes said that report could come back as soon as today.

“As part of the investigation, there are some things we are following up on,” Barnes said. “We are not without clues.”

Barnes would not elaborate.

Family members said Sunday they have gotten no information from investigators.

“They ain’t nobody told us nothing,” said Kim Bailey, Taylor’s daughter. “Nobody from the sheriff’s department ain’t uttered a word.”

What is known is that a customer discovered Taylor’s body shortly after midnight Sunday morning, and the last known customer had left the store about 11:30 Saturday night.

Neighbors interviewed Sunday said they neither saw nor heard anything suspicious.

But the incident left more than one of them horrified.

“I don’t know too much about it,” said an elderly woman who lives next door to the store and who didn’t want to give her name. “I’ll be scared to death tonight.”

Another talked about losing a friend.

“It’s a sad situation for me today,” said Douglas Chrismon, who says he had known Taylor for 30 years. “It breaks your heart.”

Another talked about seeing Taylor leave the store late at night carrying bags of money.

“It makes me wonder if it was someone familiar with his patterns,” said Terry Miller, who described the store as usually being a quiet place. “There have been a couple of incidents where the sheriff’s department came out when the teenagers got a little rowdy.”

The store occupies one of the most scenic sections of Guilford County, an area of rolling countryside dotted with a mix of horse farms, mobile homes and run-down barns.

The store itself isn’t much to look at.

“It was a good country place to come,” Vance said. “It was safe. You didn’t have to worry about getting in no gunfight.”

Vance said area teens liked to come to Taylor’s to shoot pool at the two tables in the back of the store, and the older customers liked to watch football and racing on the satellite TV or talk politics or play cards.

Taylor, who operated the store seven days a week, including holidays, sold a little bit of everything: overalls, nuts and bolts, tires, beer, chewing tobacco and country ham.

At one time, Taylor also sold feed, fertilizer and gas.

He did his best to protect his property. The bars at the doors and windows attest to that.

Even so, family members said Taylor had suffered at least 10 break-ins. But Saturday night marked the first time anyone had confronted Taylor face to face.

At his home just a few miles away on Rock Creek Dairy Road, friends and family gathered to mourn and remember.

They recalled the 31 years he spent as a Greensboro firefighter, his love for dirt track racing, the hauling and grading business that he still operated and his big heart.

“He done for people when they didn’t deserve to be done for,” Shirley Taylor said of her late husband. “He liked to be a friend to everybody.”

And that’s why he spent so much time at his store.

“He did it because he wanted the people in the neighborhood to have a place to hang out,” Shirley Taylor said. “He did it because he loved people.”

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com