A Message From Son Of Deputy Killed In Okaloosa County Florida

Rickey Stokes

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Posted by: RStokes
Date: Sep 24 2015 8:07 PM

I am Bill Myers's son and I would like to clarify one misunderstanding that has propagated like wildfire in the media and on the internet the past few days.While it is true that one of his biggest joys was taking his grandchildren to Disney, he did not come back to work solely to take his granddaughter to the park. That is a simplified version of some events and a complex man.Was he planning the next trip to Disney? Probably, he almost always had at least one trip in the works, but there was not a family trip that was the tipping point that put him back in uniform.

My father was a man of many hats, both to his family and to the world at large. He was a 20 year Air Force veteran before he started his second career as a deputy. He was a photographer, an amateur radio operator, a tech geek, anda Disney junkie. Beyond that he had more various crafting or mechanically oriented hobbies than I can even list.He liked kayaking around the area, and while he no longer had the unoffical reptile sanctuary at his house, his attachment to animals(especially reptiles) was almost a local legend.

My father also really loved his job, you do not have a career that long and have as huge an impact on the community as he did when you are just 'making a paycheck'
Helping people was something that was an integral part of his being from helping the other guys with some kind of technical issues to helping the neighbors kid with a project.

For all of these reasons, he went back to work a few years after his retirement.

I love my dad and miss him, and the world is a much darker place without him in it.

This isn't going to change he hundreds of headlines I am seeing, but I could not let the simplified reasoning stand without some form of rebuttal

Eric Myers

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