Another of our founding members has passed away. Berry Pyron was at our first meeting and remained an active member until the mid-seventies. He died on December 2, 2002.

Tall and thin, possessed of the sharpest mind I have ever encountered, Berry was our club’s “intellectual.” If you ever needed a technical question answered, you went to Berry. He always knew the answer.

Berry never owned a telescope, but he was an active attendee of our early observing parties. He loved gadgets and unusual mechanical devices. He had a monstrous Swiss wristwatch with a multitude of dials. It even showed the phases of the Moon. This was pretty unusual for 1948. He used a Minox camera, but for more serious work liked to take pictures in stereo, using the only such camera ever marketed in this country, a Kodak. At one time he had the 5-place log and trig tables microfilmed, and laminated in plastic. These he carried in his shirt pocket, and with a magnifying glass he was able to do any mathematical calculations which his genius required – on the spot! He had one of the first battery-operated transistor radios in Atlanta. It was built into a plastic cigarette box, and he carried it in his shirt pocket.

From about 1955 until the mid-70’s Berry operated a book sales table at AAC meetings. In those days books on astronomy were not easy to find in Atlanta. Berry would scour the bookstores each month, and purchase the books that he thought would be of interest to Club members. He sold them at cost. This operation was quite popular, and sales were brisk.

An inveterate bachelor, he finally succumbed to marriage when in his fifties. Sadly his wife, Amy, passed away exactly two months after his death.

Further details of his life are available in his Atlanta Journal-Constitution obituary, which I have saved on this site.

If you ever met Berry, you will miss him; if not, you missed something in this life.

                                                                        - Lenny Abbey

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