Deceased March 5, 2020
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In Memory
Bob prepared for Amherst at Scarsdale (N.Y.) High School and became an important pitcher for the baseball team and quarterback for the football team, a leader for Chi Psi fraternity and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate. Roommates Bob Brinker ’53 and Don Simon ’53 remember him as an all-around, lively Amherst guy, stayed in touch with him over the years and marveled at his dynamic career and life.
After Amherst, Bob married his high school sweetheart, Patricia Landis, earned his M.B.A. at Harvard and served in the army as an officer in the finance corps. After helping to found a microwave company, he became the CEO of a timber company and created a conglomerate with 10,000 employees.
After Patricia’s tragic death in 1971, a second marriage that failed and then what became a 42-year marriage to Joan Gustavson, Bob made a new start in land development, buying a cattle ranch in Montana and later a ski area and a film company.
However, Bob wrote that he wanted to be remembered for trying “to right the wrong inflicted on innocent people.” He succeeded by serving on the federal council on minority opportunity and personally going to places like Kosovo, Macedonia and P.S.#1 at Ground Zero to seek out and assist the afflicted.
While living in northern Italy for a year, Bob and Joan met an Italian man, an unsung hero from WWII, who revealed his dramatic story. Determined to make it public, Bob found author Mark Sullivan to write an historical novel that became the bestselling Beneath the Scarlet Sky, now becoming a film—another highlight in Bob’s active life and his wish to live it to its fullest.
Bob died on March 5, 2020, in Monterey, Calif., and leaves his wife, Joan; daughter Deborah; son Scott; five grandchildren; and mourners all over the world.
George Edmonds ’53, with help from Scott Dehlendorf and Mark Sullivan and also Rich Gray ’53, Bob Brinker ’53 and Don Simon ’53