Roy community rallies to support popular retired teacher after cancer affects family again

ROY — A retired Roy teacher is now getting an outpouring of support from some of his former students, as his family is going through a difficult time, yet again.

They’re about to lose a third family member to cancer.

The Roy Junior High there now is not the same building that Larry Jones taught math in for more than 30 years, but that school community still remembers him.

Larry Jones is now retired but taught at Roy Junior High School for more than 30 years. Now, he spends his days caring for his 38-year-old daughter who is in hospice for brain cancer.

“Throughout his tenure, he had this habit of helping everyone,” his son Tyler explained.

The school is not the building, but rather the many people who remember Mr. Jones.

“One of his students would come and say they were worried about where they were going to get their next meal, and he would slip them a $20 bill,” his son explained.

It’s just the kind of teacher Tyler said his dad was. But he said his dad rarely asked for help himself, even when his wife Patty struggled through cancer in her vocal cords and again with breast cancer that took her life in 2012.

KSL produced a story with Patty for Mother’s Day just before her death because she too was known for being giving, in being a young women’s leader at church.

About four years before, Tyler’s oldest sister, Carri, was also taken by cancer, a brain tumor, which brings us to Kali, now in the final stages of her third bout with brain cancer.

“Kali is very much like my dad, in that she gives and she will give, and she will give, especially a smile, and her positive, bubbly attitude that she’s so well-known for,” Tyler said.

All of the treatments can be expensive, but as Tyler explains, Kali hasn’t always had insurance. And recently, his dad took out another loan to help cover the costs.

A former student has set up this website to help out Larry Jones and his family.