08/26/2026
This week's segment of, "Meet the Board Monday! Except it's Tuesday! But Really It's Wednesday!" (I keep dropping the ball on that one. sorry, friends 😅) is Roy Clover! Here's a bit about him;
"To the best of my memory. I believe I joined the Oklahoma atheist organization (AOK) about July or August of 2008.
I would say my official position on the AOK Board of Directors is a Member-at-Large (MaL) or a Director-at-Large (DaL). As a MaL I assisted and helped with different events in any way I could, and as a DaL I took care of scheduling and setting up the gay pride AOK booth for 3 years.
My relationship with atheism is 100%. I could say I was raised in a light-hearted, religious believing home, but I could never wrap my mind around the Bible and the contradictions it has within its own cover, and with that, I considered myself agnostic since my teenage years. When I was in the Air Force at the age of 21 I met and married a woman who was a believer, which I told her, I was not a believer, and therefore, if you wanted to go to church, feel free to go by yourself, but to keep peace in the family I went along with her believing and me living a lie. I have struggled with my sexuality about being gay all my life. As a child, I didn't want to hurt my parents' feelings. So I kept it to myself. I was so good at hiding it that I just continued when I got married and when I had children. I prayed and prayed that God would take it away from me. And why I did, I don't know, because my prayers never came true. Myself conscious got to me so bad that I finally admitted to my wife I was gay. At this time in my life, I had accidentally met the love of my life. My first husband. My wife went out and found the first Christian counseling service and set me up to go to counseling. The counselor who was an ordained pastor only convinced me that I was gay. Therefore, I decided to stop lying to myself and everyone else, I divorced, and I moved in with my husband we had 9 wonderful years together. When he died, even though I tried praying, and even though other people prayed for him, I could not believe that an all loving God that creates life would take the life, of a good, loving person. I gave up on prayer and believing that my agnostic lifestyle was a lie also. At that point, in time, in my life, in 1999 I came out as atheist, and never looked back or thought about my life as anything else.
I love to go antique windows shopping, I love antique stores. My interests are collecting things, such as I have several pieces of antique jewelry, cobalt blue glassware, antique liquor decanters, four leaf clovers and three leaf shamrock pens,
salt and pepper shakers, castles, eagles, elephants, antique perfume bottles, hand blown Egyptian perfume bottles, antique bells, antique cobalt blue oil lanterns, assorted crystals, antique glass insulators, assorted magnets. and probably my biggest collection is my shot glasses.
My favorite foods kind of depends on how I'm feeling. But probably my favorite food would be Mexican. Also Italian, but I think my all-time favorite. I grew up with is home-baked macaroni and cheese, and my mom would make her own cheese sauce as I do today."
