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As he drove home from college, Bobby Mays spoke to his mother on his cell phone about his faith. Soon after, he died in an accident.
By CHRIS TISCH, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published December 17, 2002
CLEARWATER -- With a storm socking the state with high winds and rain, Lois Mays worried about her son.
Bobby Mays, 20, was driving home from college in Tennessee for Christmas early Friday morning. His parents had urged him to stay at a hotel. But Bobby said that he was wide awake and that he could make it.
"I'm wired. I can't wait to see you," Bobby told his mother from his cell phone.
Through the night and the early morning, Bobby Mays and his mother talked every hour. But when Lois Mays dialed her son's cell phone at 5:45 a.m. Friday, there was no answer.
"The phone was ringing and ringing and ringing, and he didn't answer it," she said. "And I knew."
A few hours later, Mrs. Mays was staring out the front window of her Clearwater home when a Florida Highway Patrol trooper pulled up. She had been expecting him. She wouldn't answer the door.
"Would you please go to another house!" she yelled.
But the trooper delivered the news: Bobby apparently had fallen asleep at the wheel of his green Ford Explorer while driving on Interstate 75 in Hernando County. The vehicle ran off the road, slid down an embankment, snapped a tree and flipped onto its driver's side.
Bobby died instantly.
Since then, dozens of friends and classmates have descended on Pinellas County to attend Bobby's funeral this morning. Countless others have called or written to his family from across the country.
Bobby was attending Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tenn., a school affiliated with the Church of Christ. He sang in the a cappella group the Ambassadors, which traveled the nation singing spiritual songs at youth conferences and churches.
Bobby's friends and family members said he made quick impressions on those he met. He was funny, yet respectful. He was jovial, yet well-grounded in his spirituality.
"He never drank a drop in his life," his mother said. "He never said a foul thing about anyone or to anyone. He was a great blessing. Our son has never given us anything to be ashamed of."
He was popular at school, making many friends.
"He found common ground with everyone," said Dan Burgess, a college classmate and friend. "He had this ability to meet and greet people, and he was good friends with everybody. That made him one of the most popular people on campus and just loved by everybody."
Bobby also had become a role model. Children who saw him in concert emulated him. Mrs. Mays said she received a phone call from a man in Alabama whose 5-year-old son had seen Bobby and the Ambassadors perform.
The boy mimicked Bobby, spiking his hair and singing with an air microphone to one of the group's songs, God's Getting Us Ready.
"He was a people pleaser. He always wanted people to be happy," Mrs. Mays said.
She said Bobby was born two months prematurely at St. Anthony's Hospital in St. Petersburg and almost died. Weighing less than 6 pounds, he stayed at All Children's Hospital for two weeks before coming home.
Bobby lived in St. Petersburg until he was 13 and then moved to Clearwater with his family and graduated from Dunedin High School. He was an honor student who served as vice president of his class, and was active in drama and singing. As early as age 10, Bobby knew he wanted to attend Freed-Hardeman.
He was a junior studying public relations and advertising, but he planned to take a semester off to work and get caught up financially.
Mrs. Mays, a schoolteacher, said she stayed up all night Thursday because she was fretting about the weather. Bobby told her stories from school during their hourly calls as he drove home.
Bobby's father, William, called Bobby at 4:45 a.m. as he pulled into a gas station near Wildwood.
"I'm wide awake," Bobby said. "I'm wired."
But Bobby didn't pick up the phone an hour later. Mrs. Mays called the Highway Patrol immediately and asked them to search the interstate.
"My son is hurt so badly he can't talk to me because the phone just keeps ringing," she recalls telling the dispatcher. "Please get my son. He's on the side of the road."
Troopers estimate that Bobby crashed about 5:15 a.m.
Because he was leaving school for a semester, all the contents of his dorm room were packed into the Explorer. Tossed from the vehicle were Bibles, Christian albums and letters from college friends telling Bobby how much he'd be missed.
Mrs. Mays said that during her last conversation with her son, she brought up his schooling. She encouraged him to stay there.
"Mom, don't you know? Don't you know all things work for good for those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose?" Bobby told her, quoting the New Testament. "That's the plan, Mom."
Mrs. Mays said those words bring her comfort.
"Our faith is anchored in Jesus Christ. We believe in all our hearts that he is in heaven," she said. "That's all I can live by, that it's okay, that all things do work for good."
A funeral for Bobby Mays is scheduled for 11 a.m. today at Pinellas Park Church of Christ, 6045 Park Blvd., with burial to follow at Memorial Park Cemetery.