Roy Alton Kitchens

Roy Alton Kitchens was a Billy Graham who believed, read and told of God’s Word faithfully, a Don Miller who prayed fervently, a Joe Godfrey whose words mightily talked against what is evil and for what is right. He was an intimidating Donald Trump who would stubbornly stand his ground for what he thought was right, no matter the opposition and a Charlie Kirk who was not ashamed nor afraid to share his faith. He was a Paul Harvey who always had an interesting story to tell, an Albert Einstein who knew something about everything and a Santa Claus who unselfishly provided the needs and wants of many. He was a Walt Disney who had unlimited creativity and brilliant ideas, a Thomas Edison with amazing inventions in his mind and a Henry Ford who made things bigger and better. He was an Abraham Lincoln whose words were profound and memorable, a Henry Kissinger who would debate until the end and a Beatle who had a hard day’s night and had been working like a dog. He was a Dick Clark who didn’t look his age, a Pat Boone who drank milk but no alcoholic beverages and an Evil Knievel who took dare devil risks and lived to tell about it. He was a Paul Newman with beautiful baby blue eyes, a Houdini who could get into and out of some of the biggest messes and a Babe Ruth who struck out 1,330 times but also hit 714 home runs. He was a Mr. Rogers who made learning fun and beneficial for his children, a businessman with a briefcase in one hand and a handyman with a toolbox in the other. He had the penmanship of John Hancock, the energy of an Eveready battery, the determination of “The Little Train that Could,” and the strong shoulders of Atlas holding more than his share of the load. He was a George Washington who was the founding father of my family, an Elvis Presley who loved me tender, and a Romeo who knew how to make me tingle with his touch. He had a tongue that he bit when I embarrassed him AGAIN and teeth that he gritted when I made him angry yet AGAIN. He had a big heart that I prayed would keep on ticking for a long time. He couldn’t leap tall buildings with a single bound, but he’s my hero and was my husband for 52 ½ years until my heart broke when death did us part on September 16, 2025.

Roy Alton Kitchens was an entrepreneur. inventor, dreamer, engineer, draftsman, business owner, farmer, repairman, Baptist deacon, Sunday School teacher, dulcimer player, guitar pick maker, traveler to 9 countries, jack of all trades and master of them all. His speech was eloquent, quite detailed and long in length. His prayers were fervent, heartfelt and mighty. As a certified genius he was most often the smartest man in the room.

He was born a New Year’s baby at home in Rienzi, MS on January 1, 1938, to B. A. and Mary Kitchens. B. A was a principal, teacher, coach, guidance counsellor and farmer. Mary was a post mistress. a seamstress at a pants factory, sales associate in the Men’s department at Sears and the church pianist. Roy was the middle child with Thelma being the big sister in charge and Elwanda being the fun-loving spoiled baby sister.

At one time his family lived in Kendrick, MS in a large two-story house on 150 acres of farmland. They had huge gardens and numerous apple, pear and walnut trees. Often, they took all-night fishing trips to the nearby canal where they put out 50-100 fishing hooks and “ran the lines” every hour. At this house, Roy and his sister, Elwanda, hid in the huge closet where his mother stored cotton for quilt-making. They closed the door and, in the darkness, had fun creating their own light with matches until the inevitable happened. Roy bragged about being the hero who saved the day by grabbing the piles of flaming cotton and throwing them through the door, into the hallway and onto the wooden floor. He claimed the fire damage was negligible compared to the possibility of the whole house being burned down.

He started school at age five. His first school spanking was for writing his name on a school wall where over 1,000 names had already been written. He had no idea he wasn’t supposed to write on that wall but was sent to the principal’s office to be spanked by the man who served both as his principal and coach and happened to be Roy’s own father. His father spanked him a second time for chasing a pesty girl into the girls’ outhouse, about 75 yards behind the school.

He was 13 when the family moved to Gift, MS where every morning and every night Roy fed the chickens, pigs, horses, mule and milked the cows. Their mule, named Byrd, set the farm record of having 13 kids ride her simultaneously. One day Byrd came up missing. During one of Roy’s many hunting trips for squirrels and rabbits in the huge forest behind their house, he discovered Byrd, who had sunk almost out of sight in a quicksand like marsh. Using ropes and a tractor, Roy and his father pulled Byrd out of the marsh. Being too weak to stand they kept her in a sling until she died several days later.

Also at age 13, he plunged into entrepreneurial activity. On Saturdays, his father would supplement his income as a principal by working at Kroger’s in the produce department in Gift, MS. Saturday evenings his mother would drive Roy and his two sisters into town for Roy to purchase and load onto the truck bed used inoperative appliances from the Firestone store. Roy would completely reservice them at home and then sell them. with electric ranges and refrigerators being his best sellers. The kids would go to the movie theatre those Saturday evenings to watch Roy Rogers and Gene Autry until their father got off work at 8:00. At that point, they would completely fill the bed of the pick-up with hundreds of loaves of white and raisin bread and vegetables for their pigs and Roy’s pink-eyed long-eared Angora rabbits. Before selling them, he would periodically trim and package their fur in grocery bags and sell the fur to Angora sweater makers.

At age 14 Roy perfected his first self-powered, remote control lawn mower. He mounted a ½ horsepower electric motor on a push-type reel mower to drive the mower. The power cord was attached to a post in the middle of the yard. As the unit mowed, the cord would wrap around the post whose circumference was approximately equal to the width of the mower. Years later, his many inventions included Shoe Goo and a self-propelled water driven jump rope. As a fun father-son project, he shot a mouse into space in his newly engineered homemade rocket.

During the school summer months, Roy contracted his services to break ground for his community with his Ford 8N tractor. He also leased land, planted, cultivated and harvested cotton, corn and soybeans. In the winter months, all the teachers of Gift school would contract with Roy for his services to start all the fires in all of their coal heaters in each classroom early every morning. In 1955, he graduated from Kossuth High School in Kossuth, MS where he was elected “Most Intellectual” of his senior class. During his early high school years, he worked and saved up enough money to buy his first car, a Henry J, that got 35 miles per gallon.

In 1959, Roy received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at Mississippi State University where he was President of the Baptist Student Union and Chairman of the Institute of Radio Engineers. He spent one summer break up north selling magazines door to door. Another summer was spent up north stacking empty food cans into railroad cars.

After college graduation he married Ruth Anne Mason and they were proud of their three children, Amy, David and Steve. They lived in a beautiful unique home in Jackson, MS with a glass bottom boat on their lake. Roy designed and built a 32-foot pontoon boat they enjoyed on the Ross Barnett Reservoir. He built a cart for his children to ride in as they were being pulled by their Shetland pony, Shine.

In 1959, Roy and two others started an automotive wiring harness manufacturing company called Mid-South Electronics. In 1962, it was sold to School Pictures, but Roy Kitchens and Ben Collier bought it back in 1963. In 1964 they changed the name to National Industries, Inc., hired June Greenwood as Plant Manager with Ben Collier focusing on Sales and Roy focusing exclusively on Engineering. Years later National Industries Inc. had the distinction of being one of the top ten suppliers of automotive wiring assemblies in the world.

In 1967, National Industries formed Product Engineering, Inc. as a research and development firm to design and develop new products and General Marketing Group to design, develop and produce a line of electrical terminals. Ben and June married in 1969 and bought Roy’s 50% of National Industries in exchange for all Product Engineering, Inc. and General Marketing Group’s stock with an installment cash amount of $150,000. However, a tremendous setback occurred due to the attorney erring in the structure of the sale that caused Roy to be heavily taxed and lose a lot of the money.

In 1969, as the Owner, President and CEO of Product Engineering, Inc. Roy ran the firm in Jackson, MS. His inventions were mainly in the fields of medical equipment, security and education. In 1972, two main groups of investors defaulted on their commitments to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars due, and Roy had to close the business.

In 1972 he was hired back by Ben and June Collier as Vice President of Engineering of National Industries, Inc. In 1973, the company relocated to Montgomery, Alabama. In 1975, one fun project was where his team designed, built and maneuvered their river raft boat down the Alabama River, winning Second Place at the Selma River Raft Boat Race in Selma, Alabama.

National Industries, Inc. was sold to Augat, Inc. in 1991. Within a few months they fired the top executives, including Roy Kitchens. Roy sued and won a settlement against Augat for not honoring their ten-year employment agreement.

Roy started up Take-Off Data, Inc. in 1993 as a provider of construction information in the form of take-offs to HVAC, plumbing and electrical contractors. He closed the company and retired in 2009.

On March 17, 1973, Roy married his former secretary, Brenda Maddox, who he called his 21-year-old teenie bopper, with their being a 14-year age difference. They honeymooned in Acapulco, Mexico, then the two immediately moved with National Industries to Montgomery, AL. In 1978 Roy and Brenda bought 5 ½ acres of wooded land right outside Montgomery, Al in the subdivision of Foxwood in Pike Road, AL. They dug a pond with an island and then built their 4234 sq. ft. dream home they had helped design. Their builder was totally incompetent, so they fired him and ended up finishing building their home and hiring out contractors themselves. The whole building process from start to finish took 14 months.

It was there where Brenda and Roy raised their two sons, affectionately known as Sweet Scott and Sugar Shawn. In the backyard in a huge oak tree, Roy built the boys a magnificent rough-sawn cedar tree house. It slept four with two sets of bunk beds, electricity, television, air conditioner, heater, carpeting and wallpaper. It had a deck, and a full-size playground slide to use to enter and exit. Many years later Roy built his grandsons, Ryan and Sean, a treehouse that was even on a grander scale. Roy built Shawn a wood framed bed in the shape of a gold racecar that had Michelan tires. He made Scott’s bedroom into a University of Alabama museum. Roy built the boys a full-size mechanical merry-go round carnival horse to ride. Also, in Pike Road, Roy invented the Invisible Fence, a dog containment system, after being faced with the challenge of having two white Samoyeds leave home and make trouble throughout the neighborhood.

When Roy was 9, after a church revival meeting, his father told him how to accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Then he gave him a pencil with John 3:16 on it: “God so loved the world, that He gave his Only Begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.” That night Roy lay in his youth bed on the screened-in front porch and contemplated on the writing on his pencil. It was then Roy became a Christian. So, for the rest of his life, Roy was a servant of God, preaching at Youth Revivals, serving on numerous church committees and holding several leadership positions including Chairman of the Deacons and Sunday School Teacher. He headed up two church building programs, Together We Build and Challenge to Build at two different churches. His prayers were eloquent and profound. He read through the Bible more than once and listened to scriptures on his CDs for hours. He knew how to beautifully present the Gospel to pave the way for others to know how to get to heaven.

For many years, Roy and his family of four were active members of Eastern Hills Baptist Church in Montgomery, AL when they volunteered to help the church start a new church. Therefore, in 1984, they were blessed to be among the 52 who became charter members of Taylor Road Baptist Church in Montgomery, AL. In 2011 they joined the magnificent First Baptist Church in Montgomery, AL under the leadership of the great Jay Wolf until his retirement in 2020. The beloved Mark Bethea is the current pastor.

During his final years Roy was plagued with major health problems with his heart, kidneys and three bouts of cancer. He spent his last year mostly bedridden before dying September 16, 2025, at the age of 87.

He was proceeded in death by his parents, B. A. and Mary Kitchens and his sister, Thelma Dellinger. He leaves behind his treasured family, wife of 52 ½ years, Brenda Kitchens, sons, David (Jackie) Kitchens, Steve (Teresa) Kitchens, Scott Kitchens, Shawn (Brandy) Kitchens, daughter, Amy Kyzar (Johannes Markus), sister, Elwanda Smith, six grandchildren and nine great grandchildren, with one great granddaughter on the way.

A Celebration of Life service will be held in early 2026. Phone calls and visits with the family are encouraged and welcomed anytime. Donations can be made to The Caring Center, First Baptist Church, 305 South Perry St., Montgomery, AL 36104. Thank you ahead of time for your love and comforting encouraging words.