I'm not sure how many knew of this one, but here is an announcement sent by his family:
"A note to those with whom Bearone corresponded. This is to let you know that he passed away Wednesday night and would want you to know how very much his friends meant to him."
email: bearone37@aol.com
May he stand before God naked and unashamed by the grace of Jesus Christ.
I found this story that was on my website he sent in.
Story by "bearone"
In my earliest memories we had two homes, one in a major northern city where my father worked and the other in an adjoining state where we had a farm.
I was three years old at the time and remember well going to the YMCA in the city, to the pool, where I learned to swim. As most know all swimming in the "Y" pool was nude. I never wondered why and still don't know, it was just the way they did it and it seemed OK to me.
When I would be at the farm I would swim in our pond nude also because that was the "way you swim". Our neighbors down the road had a daughter my age and we would play together frequently and would go swimming on warm summer days at our pond. It was the way I swam and was only natural and convenient that she did also.
Soon we found that playing nude was as normal as swimming nude. There never was a hint of anything evil in what we did. We chased, climbed trees, swam and had great fun just being kids. I don't think, looking back, that anyone ever knew that we played nude, we never thought to tell them.
When I was ten we sold everything and moved to Florida. The land we bought was very large, and it was never hard to find a place to be nude, but there was never a friend to share that with and I eventually grew out of it.
Years later, after I was married and was living in Miami, I saw an ad for a movie about nudist, playing at an "Art Theater", and was literally drawn to it. My wife agreed it seemed like fun and we were thrilled to find a nudist camp in Homestead. It was like going back in time for me.
While there we met the Hadley family who move to Kissimmee a few years later and started Cypress Cove. A year later we move to the Tampa area and found our friends in Kissimmee. A humble beginning has turned into a beautiful place.
This is where my life took a turn! At age thirty, never having known anything about God, my life was suddenly and dramatically changed. Never having had any experience with God it was easy to believe that since most people did not walk around nude in a public place it wasn't the thing a christian should do. Along with a host of other things, nudism got the toss!
After several years I had noticed that the things that God had taken out of my life where not missed and in fact had made me very happy......except nudism.
Because the change in my life had also placed me into a position of public ministry, bible study was a regular place to turn for "God why?". After more than twenty years of study I could find no good or valid reason to believe that God had a problem with nudity. He made me nude ! And I was back at the cove.
Along comes the computer age which I have found more difficult than one may believe, and my research there was confirming what I had discovered for myself, it's not what you wear that concerns God but rather who you are. Who you REALLY are. That research also is where I first found an intelligent young man whom I consider to be a friend. Take a bow Boyd!
Apart from the personal tragedy this family must bear, we mourn the loss of yet another man who is a link to a time when a more relaxed attitude about same-sex nudity existed among the general population and at the YMCA in particular.
Through the happy coincidence of having a secluded rural home, a pond and a free-spirited female childhood neighbor, he enjoyed much of what nudist families want for their children but have such a hard time finding in our crowded cities and in a time when childhood is so regimented and rule-bound.
Most importantly he came to saving faith in Christ and was able to reconcile the supposed tension between Christianity as it is practiced in America and the noble ideals of nudism and nude living.
Thank God that he was able to pass along this stirring testimony before he went on to his reward!
We have such moral confusion about nudity in America, prudishness and prurience conspiring to demonize and degrade the nude body that God created.
Lord we thank you for sending us BearOne and we pray that the few remaining men and women who can share tales like this can do so before it is too late for them and for us.
God rest his soul!
God rest his
