Andrew James Byas was born on Aug. 29, 1913 in Kosciusko, Mississippi to James and Beulah Byas. Along with his twin brother, Anderson Dean and his older sister, Geneva, Andrew (called “AJ” by his family and friends) was raised in a loving family. After graduating from high school and attending two years of college in Mississippi, AJ began work in a shipbuilding yard in Mobile. When World War II started, AJ was drafted into the Quartermaster Corps of the U.S. Army, where he served all four years in the Aleutian Islands-except for a brief leave to bury his twin brother who died from a traffic accident in Chicago. Honorably discharged in 1945, PFC Byas briefly returned home before setting his sights on Birmingham, Alabama. He soon met and married Ella Vaughn. Unable to have children, they adopted two children orphaned during the Korean Conflict. In 1963 the family moved to Gary, Indiana, to escape the violence of the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham and the subsequent bombing of his father-in-law’s church, where four children were killed. In Gary, Andrew worked for the South Shore Railroad and Ella taught in the Chicago Public Schools. In 1970, AJ and Ella moved to Detroit, Michigan to be closer to her siblings. In 1983, they returned to Birmingham to care for Ella’s aging mother and AJ’s sister. In 1995 the couple moved to Arlington Heights, IL to be closer to their son and his family. After Ella’s death in 1997, AJ moved to Evanston where he lived comfortably and independently until his health declined. AJ peacefully passed away on Jan. 1 due complications from heart failure. AJ is survived by his son, Kim, Kim’s wife, Mary, and their children, Kim Jr., Tudor and Tess of Evanston; and by his daughter, Yang Ja and her daughter, Alexandra from West Bloomfield, MI; and a host of cousins. The funeral was held at the House of Thompson Mortuary.
