Bob

We’re in the People room today to share some memories of a special man who became my friend for more than three decades.

Robert Willis and I spoke for the first time in 1978 when I called him to ask if he would be interested in working with me as a consulting engineer on one of my projects. I knew a little about him but did not know him personally, so I called him Mr. Willis. That would be the only time he would allow me to refer to him as ‘Mister.’ Later that day we had our first face-to-face meeting, and he was genial, gregarious, with a warm and welcoming smile as he let me know I was to call him Bob.

By my reckoning he was maybe twenty years passed my age, and would have many years of experience over me, but Bob seemed to show no arrogance or self-importance. In that first conversation there was one noticeable difference in this man that became apparent to me: My profession of architecture and engineering is made up mostly of somewhat educated people, but among them there seems to be a distinct lack of ability to speak for more than a few seconds without using one or more swear words. Bob was different: He talked to me for over an hour without using a single swear word. It turns out that we would talk for over thirty years without either of us ever using swear words.

After that first project was completed, we would work together on many projects. During those years we became good friends in addition to our professional relationship. Bob and his wife, Jodie (Jo), were devout Christians, dedicated to serving people in many ways other than professional engineering. In addition to the three children born to them, they had two adopted children which they rescued from broken foster care and gave them a safe, loving home in which to grow up. Their adopted son would go on to college, afterwards joining Bob in his engineering firm. As I was around Bob frequently over three decades, it was clear to me he loved his adopted boy and girl the same as his natural children.

Besides his family and his engineering firm, Bob had another endeavor to which he was totally committed: the Gideons International. He cared deeply for the mission of the Gideons, and for those men with whom he distributed Bibles all over the world. It was a great day for Connie and me when Bob invited us to be his and Jo’s guests at the Gideons’ North Alabama Chapter annual conference and dinner. He did not tell us that he was going to receive a special recognition at that event, so we were completely surprised when the emcee called Bob to the dais. Bob was surprised too, as he didn’t know about it either. They gave him a nice plaque and some kind words, and 500 people stood up to applaud Bob for his many years of service to the Gideons. And then we were surprised when Bob asked us to stand and be recognized as his friends.

Bob was, at all times, unflappable. He had a regular expression that he used often as his response for most events, whether great or small, it was a melancholy “O, me.” My son, Chuck, was often in the office when Bob would visit and occasionally utter that phrase. Chuck liked it so much it became his go-to response for many situations. To this day, we laugh at it, and remember Bob. It was a microcosm of the person he was.

The best example of who Bob was came about when we were designing a new building to be built at the Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. The design team consisted of me and three consulting engineers including Bob. We had the plans ready for a preliminary review, so we agreed to take them up to the base for a staff meeting with the officers. The general contractor also intended to come to the meeting with us. A friend of mine loaned me his airplane, a twin-engine prop jet, and the pilot, so we could make the trip there and back in one day. We stopped in central Kentucky to pick up the contractor and then dropped  him off on the way back.

The meeting itself was very positive and our design was well-received, but that part of the trip turned out to be incidental as it was the ride that got interesting. For most of the trip there and back we flew above the clouds as there were scattered storms, but as we neared the airport back in Huntsville we had to drop through the clouds. It was storming in those clouds, lightning and heavy rain pounded the airplane, zero visibility. As the pilot was receiving instructions for the landing from the control tower, there was a brilliant flash of lightning, a deafening thunder clap, and then the pilot informed us the lightning had struck the airplane, knocking out the radio. Fortunately, both engines and the instruments were still working, but he no longer had contact with the tower. To say it quickly became tense in the cabin of that airplane would be an understatement.

I should say it became tense among three of the five people on the plane. I knew the pilot well and I knew he was not tense, and, though I was a bit nervous, I had confidence he would land us safely on the ground. I turned around to see how the guys behind me were doing, and two of them were too tight to speak. Bob was being just Bob. He gave me his widest grin and, although I could not hear him above the noise, his mouth said “O, me.”

One of the great joys of my experience knowing Bob were those times when he would talk about some of the events he was in, or witnessed, while he was in the U.S. Navy. Bob was a true-blue patriot. As a teenager, he joined the Navy at the height of the war in 1943, and was soon thrust into action aboard an LST providing transport of battle materiel, support supplies, and troops in the South Pacific. He saw heavy naval action at Guadalcanal, Guam, and other places in the Solomon Islands. Bob told me that, from day one, the commander of the LST saw something in this 19-year-old, and took him onto the bridge to be his personal aide. He put Bob to work keeping records in a notebook, writing down everything they did, and all that happened around them.

Bob said most days were so chaotic he had trouble writing it all down. One of their assignments was to join a flotilla of five LSTs loaded with survival supplies intended for the Marines stranded on Guadalcanal Island. The flotilla took up holding positions in the shallow waters off the coast of the island, but he said the Japanese air cover kept them from going ashore. Then one morning as the sun rose over the island’s horizon, suddenly the sky was filled with Japanese planes headed toward the flotilla. The commander told Bob these planes were the zeros, flown by kamikaze pilots making suicide runs intent on crashing their planes into ships. He said the LST was a much smaller vessel and they would not have the success they had hitting the larger ships. He told Bob to keep a record of the number and location of each zero as it hit the water, or a ship, and how many were shot down.

When it was all over, Bob said he reported to the commander that six of the zeros missed their targets and plunged into the sea. Two of the planes had crashed directly into a ship. All the other zeros were shot down. Bob said he had one diving straight at him, but the ship’s gunners shot it down and it missed hitting them by a few feet, drenching his ship with a giant plume of water. His report noted that the number of planes in that attack totaled 136. All the pilots perished. (I could envision Bob, as that Japanese zero was diving toward him on the bridge of that LST bobbing in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Guadalcanal, saying to himself, “O, me.”)

Then, one day in 2008 Bob called me, said he had some bad news. He was being forced to retire as his mind was not as sharp as it needed to be for his line of work. Seems he had driven to the store a few days earlier and got lost, could not find his way home. After an hour of driving around, he had to call his daughter to come get him. At the age of just 82 he was losing his mental capacity.

We talked for a few minutes that day, and I expressed my heartfelt appreciation for our friendship, and all he had taught me, and done for me, and all the good years we had working together. That was our last conversation, and I was not sure if Bob could have remembered any of it.

Four years later his daughter called with the news that her dad was fading quickly. She said he had advanced Alzheimer’s disease.

My good friend, Bob, passed away January 5, 2012, at age 86.   

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