| Name at birth: | Billy Ray Wheeler |
| Date of birth: | 05 Jan 1967 |
| Place of birth: | Ashland, Kentucky USA |
| Date of death: | 27 July 1997 |
| Place of death: | Margate, Florida |
| Resting place: | Blaine, Kentucky USA |
| Submitted by: | O. D. Hall BILLMISS@aol.com |
Billy Ray Wheeler, Jr. was born in Ashland, Kentucky at King’s Daughters’ Hospital on January 5, 1967. He went to Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky for a degree in Police Science. He was a good person. He was a police officer for University of Kentucky, an EMT, First Aid Instructor, a CPR Instructor, and RAD instructor (women’s self-defense), and loved to work the Special Olympics. He also was a very good artist. Whenever he got a chance, between jobs, he would visit hospitals to draw cartoons for sick children. I lost Billy Ray, my beloved son, on July 27, 1997 to suicide. He got his gun and put into his mouth and killed himself. Suicide hurts the family. His family had always been there for him, but for some reason he chose not to let us know how depressed he was. He had met this woman on the Internet, got rid of all his possessions, quite his job, sold everything he had, and left his family and three daughters to go to Florida to start a new life with this woman he met on the Internet. He was so excited when he left Lexington, Kentucky to go to Florida to be with this woman. We do not know what happened to him while he was in Florida. He was only there for five months. We love and miss him so very much and our entire family has been suffering with terrible guilt. Of all people, for Billy Ray to do this is something that everyone is having a very difficult time trying to figure out why? He always volunteered to help others, never giving himself enough time for just him. He had so much to give to this world. He had three daughters, twins (Jessica and Sara) he adopted that were his x-wife’s, and Lauren his biological daughter whom he loved dearly. Billy Ray had to be feeling a pain that was so foreign to him that he couldn’t find the words or a way to reach out to the people he knew loved him so very much. I believe that if he had been able to think more clearly he would have never intentionally hurt his family or himself. Something, I know, scared him to the point where he just decided to end it all, and what that is I will probably never know, but I still try to figure out why. We just have to accept the fact that we may never know what he was thinking or experiencing the five months before he decided to take his life in the manner he did. He was a religious person, and I don’t understand why he chose to commit suicide. He had to think that at that time, he had no other choice. Something happened to him while he was in Florida. We love him so very much and miss him terribly. Life for our family has forever changed.
Billy Ray Wheeler’s Mother
A piece of art by Billy Ray Wheeler