On August 7, 2023, Josiah Alexander Boone, born December 7, 1958, met his Redeemer face-to-face. Josiah was zealous about his belief in a Carpenter who walked the streets of Jerusalem some 2000 years ago. Josiah called Him "Yeshua the Messiah" and believed that Yeshua was the only Hope for every individual.

Josiah could do just about anything….mechanics, carpentry, electrical…you name it. From the time he was 16, he worked. He was a gifted mechanic with a quick and sure mind. His first job, as a mechanic, was at K-Land Tire in Lumberton. This job paid for his first car, an orange Nova. One of his next jobs was helping to build a bottling plant in Lagos, Nigeria, shortly after graduating from Lumberton High School in 1977. Then he worked for Carolina Power & Light on a traveling maintenance crew and was the crew member assigned to remove the head from the Brunswick nuclear reactors on two refueling outages. He attended Toccoa Falls Bible College in Toccoa, GA, then went on to Texas Aero Tech in Dallas, where he learned to take an airplane apart and put it back together, then graduated first in his class. Josiah's travels took him to Honduras several times, to Panama and Belize, and all over the United States. His family and friends were always amazed by the stories of his adventures when he returned home.

Once he set out to assemble an ultralight aircraft from a variety of parts that he had purchased or traded for. (Josiah loved to barter and trade for things.) He built a runway in front of our father's house and cut a gap in the tree line at the edge of the field. Josiah told me how our World War II aviator father, in his late 80's, watched as Josiah cranked the ultralight at the end of the freshly graded air strip for the first flight. A few minutes later, after making a small circular flight and discovering first-hand why ultralights are supposed to have cockpits, he crash-landed on the same dirt runway, as the caster-wheel on the nose dug into the dirt on the landing.

The landing spoke for itself, so Josiah asked his lone 80+ year old observer about the takeoff,

"How much did I clear the tops of those trees by?"

The old aviator said,

"Not by much!" and just shook his head.

Recently, when Josiah retold that story of the first flight of his cockpit-less airplane, we belly laughed, because we could both hear the voice and the tone of our Daddy like he was standing there. This was something that Josiah and the rest of the Boones did together on the Pine Log Road in Lumberton, North Carolina. We laughed. We will miss laughing with our brother more than words can say.

Back to that home-built aircraft story. A few weeks after his crash-landing, Josiah procured a cockpit to install on the aircraft. Daddy watched again as Josiah cleared those trees by more than 10 feet and flew the aircraft from Pine Log Road to the Lumberton Airport where he did multiple touch and goes on the runway before returning to the dirt landing strip as our father watched him return from his successful flight.

Years later, that old aviator said to me, "You know, Josiah did everything that I ever wanted to do including learning to fly and building an airplane."

In one of my last conversations with Josiah, I told him what Daddy had said. Josiah stopped, "Daddy said that?"

I said, "Yes. He told it to me."

Josiah said, "Well, that makes me feel better. I'm glad you told me. He never told me that."

In more recent years, Josiah was an avid pickleball player. He loved the game and was on the court with old and new friends often.

Josiah was preceded in death by his mother, Irene Alford Boone, and his father, Daniel Murphy Boone. He was the oldest of four children and is survived by siblings: Janet Carol Boone Altman (Steve), M. Katherine Boone, and Stephen M. Boone (Sheila); two nephews, two nieces, numerous cousins, and countless friends.

A graveside service will be held on Saturday, September 30, 2023, at 11:00 AM where Josiah will be laid to rest in the Boone Cemetery at 4925 Pine Log Road in Lumberton, NC.