Anthony Foster kept to himself most of the time, but loved sharing stories of his adventures with his family.
“He kept us laughing,” said his sister Pamela Haynes, of Atlanta. “He told a great story.”
Mr. Foster was a long-haul truck driver, his sister said. He drove for a number of companies, one of which was Dunkin' Donuts.
“He seemed to like being on the road,” she said. “He got to see more of the world that way.”
One of the funnier stories his sister Leila Foster, of Covington, can remember is from her brother’s truck driving days. She said he was trying to avoid hitting another car, when his semi turned over. Mr. Foster was not injured, but the mayhem that ensued after he lost his load, and the way he told the rest of the story, will continue to make his family laugh, she said.
“The truck was full of live chickens,” she said with a laugh. “And he said there were chickens running all over the road and there were feathers everywhere!”
She said the family looked forward to Mr. Foster’s trips home and the next installment of stories.
Mr. Foster drove for more than 15 years before his health took him off the road. He had two strokes in 2008, the second of which left him with severe brain damage, Mrs. Haynes said. He’d been in the care of Golden Living Center since then, she said.
Anthony Lamar Foster, of Atlanta, who was known as Pete to his family, died Oct. 10 at Golden Living of unknown causes, Mrs. Haynes said. He was 56. A funeral service will be held at 1 p.m. Tuesday at Mt. Patmos Baptist Church. Burial at Washington Memorial Park will follow. Raleigh Rucker Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.
While Mr. Foster liked driving he loved fishing, his sisters said.
“I think it was a solitude of it that he liked,” Mrs. Haynes said. “He’d get in his truck and go from lake to lake. And when he’d come back, he’d tell us about what he caught.”
Ms. Foster said her brother was the only one, out of the eight Foster children, who enjoyed fishing.
“I don’t know where he got that from,” she said. “But it is something he just loved to do.”
While his siblings knew a lot about their brother they realized after he died, they had no idea how Mr. Foster got his nickname of “Pete.”
“How did he get his nickname,” Mrs. Haynes asked a group of her brothers and sisters. “Why’d we call him Pete?”
The began to talk among themselves, and one of them finally said it was a name their mother tagged him with, and it just caught on.
“Well, there you have it,” she said with a laugh. “I never knew that.”
Mr. Foster is also survived by his mother, Geneva Foster of Decatur; two additional sisters, Carolyn Kelley of Oxford and Wanda Hinton of Jacksonville, Fla. and brothers, Alfred Foster Jr. of Stone Mountain, William Foster of Clayton County and Ronnie Foster of Decatur.
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