Doug Roy is slicing a banana without touching it, chattering as he slides his knife through the air three or four times. When he finally peels back the intact yellow skin, the neighborhood kids who've gathered for this free show see the fruit is already sliced and gasp with amazement, as they have at each of his tricks. He is magic personified, a charming man in a vest and cape who can do things they don't understand.
That he is so much more — a guy in the midst of a dramatic career change, a father, a man who loves grand gestures and romance, a dreamer — is beside the point.
He's a bit like the Facebook page he is trying to promote. You have to spend some time there to have the enthusiasm rub off on you. Roy started "Dream Big Utah" as a meeting place for those who would like to do something extraordinary but could use a cheering section and perhaps some mentoring. Call it a gathering place for optimists — and that's certainly an apt description of Roy. Although it has only 10 members — some of them his relatives — he's betting it won't stay small.
The Holladay man believes life is magic. When he reaches into his hat, he expects to pull out a rabbit. He can't predict what the rabbit will look like, but he knows it's going to be there.
Doesn't matter whether it's the leap of faith that led him from Texas to Utah to be close to his four children after his first marriage ended or his ability to shrug off a recent layoff. For seven years he's worked in cargo and freight transport, but the economy zapped him. He just says he already knew it was time to start using the master's degree in health-care management it took him many years to earn. He'd hoped, though, for another month or so to start lining up opportunities. Now he's looking.
If a picture's worth a thousand words, this might be the one that sums him up: It's Halloween 2008 and Roy is dressed as a magician, while his wife, Tonya, is a rabbit, standing inside a top hat with a vinyl-covered cardboard rim. They super-sized the hat so they could dance in it together. They share a love of ballroom dancing.
They also share a blended family of four children each (five of them live with the couple), a sense of humor that's sweet and sentimental and an Aug. 16 birthday. She describes Roy as thoughtful and creative and kind.
He sees himself as a "bit of a visionary," able to picture the end result at the beginning of the trail. Some version of Dream Big Utah belongs in every state, he says, but it's not intended to be a national thing. Each one needs to be small enough, local enough, so members can find others who share their own goals, then meet up for lunch.
"I'm trying to create sources for anyone with challenges, struggles, dips in the road," he says. "We all have things we want to support or accomplish. When it gets tough, that's the stopping point of so many people."
His own big dream is to figure things out financially so that in another decade — he's 46 now — he can retire and serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He served in Korea as a youth, and he would like to take his acquired life skills into the mission field as an adult, too.
He's never been afraid of jumping in, says younger brother Jim Roy. "He has always done what needed to be done."
When he was a teen and finances were rocky at home for a time, Roy got not one, but two, jobs and turned his wages over to his dad. He kept the tips.
"He's not the kind to say, 'If there's something I can do, let me know,' " says Jim Roy. "A lot of people can't bring themselves to ask. He just shows up, shovel in hand. I admire him immensely."
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