Eugene R. Heath (1927-2018) was born in Portsmouth, Ohio on Aug. 11, 1927, and died on Aug. 26, 2018 in Tuscumbia, AL, two weeks after his 91st birthday.
After graduating from Ohio State University with a degree in Business Administration and Spanish, he spent most of the rest of his adult life in South and Central America– chiefly in Guatemala– working for paper and cardboard producing companies who imported the bulk of their raw materials–mostly paper– from the United States. For a relatively short period of time, he became a paper importer himself.
Mr. Heath married and is survived by Ofelia Zapata from Colombia, South America, and they had three daughters: Cynthia A. Williams (Houston, TX), Beatrice H. Tomlinson (Cherokee, AL), and Mary H. McDeavitt (Houston, TX). They are also survived by 6 grandchildren.
Most of the last 7 1/2 years of their lives, Mr. and Mrs. Heath resided in Texas, in the home of their daughter, Cynthia, and her husband, Keith. Mr. Heath spent the last two months of his life in Cottage of the Shoals Skilled Nursing Facility in Tuscumbia, AL..
Mr. Heath requested to be buried in a Heath family plot in a cemetery near his native town of Portsmouth, OH.
All of Mr. Heath’s survivors, family and friends owe an enormous debt of gratitude to all of those who so selflessly and diligently cared for him during the last 7+ years of his life, here, back in the country of his birth, which he never forgot to be his very own.
