Roy L. DeVries Of Garden City And Westhampton Beach Dies March 19 - 27 East
logo logo logo logo

Obituaries / Southampton Press / 1692669

Roy L. DeVries Of Garden City And Westhampton Beach Dies March 19

icon 1 Photo
Roy L. DeVries

Roy L. DeVries

author27east on Mar 30, 2020

Roy L. DeVries of Garden City and Westhampton Beach died on March 19. He was 89 years old.

He grew up in Bay Ridge and attended PS 185 and Brooklyn Technical High School. Mr. DeVries started his career selling stickers and parlayed that into a successful career in toy industry advertising sales.

He helped launch a magazine called Toy & Hobby World in the early 1960s. Ever the entrepreneur, Mr. DeVries went into mergers and acquisitions with Victor Niederhoffer to buy toy companies. He developed games like Perfection and opened his own game company, Just Games, in 1978.

Mr. DeVries produced the first murder-mystery party game and a best-selling board game, the Orient Express Mystery Detective Game.

He met his wife, Dee, in 1960 at a brokerage house. They fell in love and were married for 58 wonderful years. They had two children, Joy (married to John Heinze) and Linda (married to Ronald Howarth), and have four grandchildren, Justin, Dillon, Kevin, and Jillian. They will all miss him dearly, family members said.

Mr. DeVries’s passionate love of the beach was unsurpassed, his family said.

In the 1970s, Roy and six other members of the Swordfish Beach Club purchased the club. It is broadly felt that these seven men saved the club and made it what it is today — a place where memories and friends are made for a lifetime, his family noted.

Mr. DeVries loved a sunny beach day, his family said, watching the waves, riding his boogie board, walking the beach, or just talking to his friends at the shoreline about the stock market or current affairs.

Always a gentleman, his family said, he was enthusiastic, relentlessly positive, smiling, saying hello, and kidding around. Mr. DeVries will be remembered for wearing his hat, a yellow T-shirt, board shorts, and a Swordfish white towel around his neck, his family noted.

A life-long fan of the Knicks, Mr. DeVries loved basketball and hockey. Whether in the racetrack stands at Belmont and Aqueduct or in front of the TV, he was an avid thoroughbred handicapper. Race after race, he would loudly cheer the jockey or the horse’s number like he was trackside, his family recalled.

Mr. DeVries loved watching tennis, especially the U.S. Open, and playing doubles with good friends. He always had the daily newspaper in-hand.

Roy was buried in a private family ceremony at Westhampton Cemetery.

There will be a memorial service this summer at the Swordfish Beach Club.

You May Also Like:

The South Fork’s Bounty, on Land and at Sea | The Sessions Report

 “The South Fork’s Bounty, on Land and at Sea,” the latest in the Express ... 15 May 2025 by The Sessions Report

Federal Cuts to Libraries and Museums Hit Home | 27Speaks Podcast

Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, the executive director of the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill and, until ... by 27Speaks

LaLota, SALT Caucus Vow To Sink GOP Budget Unless State Tax Deduction Cap Is Raised More

U.S. Representative Nick LaLota said that he and five other Republican members of the House ... by Michael Wright

Southampton Police Reports for the Week of May 15

SOUTHAMPTON VILLAGE — A Village Police officer spotted a commercial pickup truck traveling on North Sea Road with flames leaping up out of the rear of the vehicle on May 7. The officer stopped the truck, whose driver had not noticed the flames, and extinguished the fire before it caused serious damage to the vehicle. SOUTHAMPTON VILLAGE — A caller told Southampton Village Police that they had seen a suspicious person “hiding in the bushes” outside a Windmill Lane bank on May 7. An officer responded to the scene and reported back that there was an employee washing the building’s ... 14 May 2025 by Staff Writer

The East End's Founding Industries: Fishing and Farming, in the Spotlight at Express Sessions

Sitting over the waters of Montauk Harbor, champions of the local farming and fishing communities ... by Michael Wright

The Bounty That Surrounds Us

When the Community Preservation Fund gets its well-earned accolades for the good it has done for the East End in the past quarter century, the focus often is on the preservation of land, keeping it from being developed and thus protecting the region from becoming too intensely suburban. Without question, that effort to maintain the region’s rural appeal is a significant, historic accomplishment. But sometimes we forget the importance of the CPF in keeping agriculture alive as a major contributor to the region’s agroeconomy, which has quality-of-life benefits of its own for both farmers and those who live among their ... by Editorial Board

Election Realignment Would Upend Town Votes

An upstate appellate court has thrown out a challenge to a realignment of town and ... by Michael Wright

East Quogue School District Budget of $32.3 Million on the Ballot Tuesday

The East Quogue School District will ask voters to approve the district’s proposed $32.3 million budget for the 2025-26 school year, which hikes spending by more than 5 percent but does not pierce the state tax cap. The proposed budget is a $1,578,988 increase in spending over the current school year’s budget, driven mostly by contractual salary hikes for staff and increasing costs of health insurance, rising tuition costs for students who attend the Westhampton Beach School District’s middle school and high school, and expanding the English language arts and science curriculum, according to the district’s budget documents. The district’s ... by Staff Writer

Quogue School District Budget Proposal Is $10 Million

The Quogue School District has proposed a 2025-26 operating budget of just under $10.1 million that includes a 4.5 percent increase in spending and a 3.29 percent increase in the tax levy but remains within the state-mandated tax cap. The growth in spending is driven primarily by increases in the cost of health insurance premiums, busing costs and tuition for students who have graduated from the Quogue School and moved up to the Westhampton Beach School District’s middle school and high school. To cover the nearly $1 million in additional spending over the amount that the state tax cap would ... by Staff Writer

Four Competing for Three Seats on Quogue School Board

There are three seats on the five-member Quogue Board of Education up for election this ... by Michael Wright