OBITUARY: A.B. Amis Passes Away Nov. 19 at Age 90, Moved to Brevard in 1953

haD career at Radiation and then Harris that lasted a total of 33 years

BREVARD COUNTY • GRANT–VALKARIA, FLORIDA – A.B. Amis went home to his great reward on Monday, Nov. 19, 2018. Born in Meridian, Mississippi, on Jan. 30, 1928, to the late A.B. Amis, Jr. and Pauline Hardin Amis, his was an idyllic childhood in spite of the great depression, thanks to loving parents and adopted brother, Paul, who was his playmate and best friend growing up in small-town Newton, MS.

Born to college-educated parents, A.B. was always expected to make good marks in school and graduated at the top of his class at Newton High School in 1946. With WW II barely ended, A.B. signed up for a two-year hitch in the U.S. Navy, with a guarantee of spending most of that time in electronics schools, launching him on an electronics career path.

After discharge, he entered college at Mississippi State and then Milsaps Colleges on the GI while courting Frances Elizabeth Holladay. Their marriage in 1949 was the beginning of 60 years of marital bliss until Alzheimer’s disease claimed her in 2009.

With Frances’s encouragement, A.B. transferred to Georgia Tech, graduating with a BSEE degree, with honors, in 1951. He worked for one year in Indiana before joining Radiation, Inc. in Melbourne, Florida, in 1953, the beginning of a career at Radiation and then Harris that lasted a total of 33 years, with a three-year hiatus in the early 1970s when he failed in a family-run RV rental business.

Following his retirement in 1988 A.B. and Frances had the fun of building their dream country home on five acres in rural Grant, where they enjoyed hosting reunions for extended family and former work associates.

Having taken up an RV camping hobby while their two sons were growing up, A.B. and Frances were able to continue the RV hobby following retirement, traveling to all 48 states and especially enjoying time spent “out west” along the spine of the Rocky Mountains.

Trained as an electrical engineer, A.B. loved writing, and his greatest professional fulfillment and talent was as a wordsmith, authoring business proposals and technical sales presentations for Radiation, Inc, in the ’50s and ’60s and later for Harris Corp. in the ’70s and ’80s. After retirement, he re-directed his wordsmith talents to hobby activities and publishing a family memoir.

A.B.is predeceased by his two wives Frances and Joyce. He is survived by his two sons, William Paul and Richard Mark, by Mark’s wife, Sandra, and grandchildren Simon and Hannah, all of Melbourne.

Other survivors from Frances’s immediate family are sisters-in-law Mildred Valentine, Bobbie Miller and Agnes Holladay, special niece Julie Holladay Strahle of Melbourne, and numerous other nieces and nephews. His stepsons Jamie and Stephen Cox, all of Melbourne, also survive him.

Memorial services will be held at Brownlie-Maxwell Funeral Home in Melbourne on Saturday, 11/24/2018 at 11:00 a.m. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Alzheimer’s Association or to the charity of your choice.

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