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EDEN — As far as I know, company never called at Roy and Elaine Turner’s front door.

You pecked on the carport door, did the little yoo-hoo, and within seconds, Roy was beckoning you inside to his den where warmth and hospitality flowed as easily as the wine he poured.

Roy Turner, who died at 82 on Jan. 22, was a backdoor kind of guy, a true people person. For years, he was an optometrist and owned Family Eye Care on Van Buren Road, a business that his son, Lee Turner, continues.

To say he had a diverse group of friends would be an understatement. At his funeral on Jan. 24, state senators, current and former, stood in line beside people who served Roy and Elaine breakfast every Sunday at Church Street Station, a local diner. The chapel at Fair Funeral Home overflowed with friends, many who stood throughout the service because all the seats were taken.

After the funeral, in a gathering at the Turner home, doctors mingled with the folks who did Roy’s yard work. He would have liked that.

He enjoyed bringing people together. He liked making us focus on our similarities, not our differences. He was a more-the-merrier person, who was known for cooking ribs for a crowd and surprising his friends with turkeys he had smoked.

He also knew his way around a garden. Roy’s backyard garden was more like a spread. From it, he coaxed broccoli, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers and green beans. You name it, Roy grew it.

He froze it, canned it and cooked it as well. With great skill, I might add. But what he enjoyed most was giving it away.

The youth at First Presbyterian Church, where Roy was a member, never went on a summer retreat that he didn’t load them down with whatever was coming up in the garden.

Many times I’ve come home to find a plastic bag full of tomatoes or squash hanging from my door knob. He didn’t need to leave a note. I knew Roy had been by.

I got to know Roy at church. He was a back-pew churchgoer with a front-row faith that he put into action. Though he appreciated a short sermon, he rarely turned down a request the church made of him.

He taught Sunday school, served as an elder and deacon and was quick to play devil’s advocate when he thought an issue needed to be examined a little closer. But his greatest gift was his sense of humor, always encouraging folks to laugh at themselves.

His church and his friends were blessed by it.

Once, when he was serving communion, my son, who was maybe 10 or 11 at the time, broke off an extra-large piece of bread from the communion plate that Roy was passing. It was an awkward moment as I gave my son “the look” and glanced around to see who might notice the hulking piece of bread in his hand.

Roy leaned down and whispered in a voice that I’m sure the whole pew heard: “Aww, come on son, get another piece — make yourself a sandwich.”

His pithy one-liners weren’t his only talent.

Almost every year he took on a starring role in the church’s dinner theater, making sure that a little comedy was infused into an evening that is known for great, local entertainment.

Roy’s favorite role was doing a parody of a wayward evangelist he called “The Right Reverend Doctor Brother Pastor Jim Faker,” Roy knew that laughter was restorative, almost as important as food.

Once, as he carried a feed-the-multitudes batch of his famous chili into the Soup Kitchen at Unity Baptist Church, I asked him why he had such a passion for feeding people.

His answer surprised me. He knew what it was like to be hungry. His father died when he was a child. It was in the midst of the Depression, and his mother couldn’t support Roy and his older brother. She was forced to put her two sons in an orphanage.

While those who worked at the orphanage filled their plates, Roy and the other kids made do with weak, watery soup. It’s where he learned what deep-in-the-stomach, true hunger felt like.

And he vowed he’d do all he could to keep someone else from suffering that feeling.

So he fed us. He brought us together, and he made us laugh.

That’s a pretty good legacy.

His granddaughter said that on the day he died, he’d made out his grocery list.

The first item on the list: wine. Roy was pretty sure some folks would be dropping by and he wanted to be ready for them.

Contact Myla Barnhardt at 627-1781, Ext. 116 or myla.barnhardt@news-record.com