Friends, family remember drowning victim
Friends and family are remembering a man who drowned Saturday in Lake Chickamauga.
Bobby Stone, of Chattanooga, died after he slipped and fell into the water near Hidden Harbor on Lake Chickamauga just before 6 p.m. Several cabin boats were tied together and the 57-year-old man was trying to cross from one boat to another, a Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency spokesman said. Witnesses said he hit his head when he slipped, preventing him from staying afloat.
Crews spent Saturday evening searching for his body, which was found around 10 a.m. Sunday.
Matt Majors with TWRA said they are awaiting a medical examiner’s report on the cause of death. They’re also awaiting a toxicology report to determine whether alcohol was a factor.
As news of his death spread, friends and family began to share their grief and memories.
Longtime friend Dolores O’Keefe said Stone seemed to know everyone in town.
“I remember nights sitting on the cafe of the Brass Register in the mid 1980s,” she told the Times Free Press on Sunday. “City sanitation trucks would be making their pickups. The guys all knew Bobby by name, and next thing he would be standing on the back of the truck heading off to help them collect the trash.”
Others took to social media to remember him.
“R.I.P. Bobby Stone,” Tim Kelly wrote in a Facebook post. “I loved you like a brother, and you meant the world to my family. We only have two constants in this world, really: our people and the truth. We shared a passion for both. I will miss him like no other.”
“This is so awful,” Susan Welsh commented under Kelly’s post. “Bobby was such an interesting, intelligent, kind, funny, creative person with rare integrity. Can’t believe it. I’m so sorry for everybody who’ll be missing him in their lives.”
Bonny Burbank Shuptrine said Stone was talented and brilliant.
“Geeez this is awful,” she wrote in a comment. “Bobby was one of the first people I met and hung around a group of people when moving to Chattanooga for corporate work years ago. … Such a fun guy, nice and very well spoken. Always enjoyed talking to him — a creative genius. What a tragic loss.”
Stone was partner and co-founder of Atomic Films until he retired.
He was involved in a controversy in 2016 in which he was arrested for domestic violence after he accused his then-wife of having an affair with Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke. Berke denied the claims, and the charges against Stone were eventually dropped.