After his freshman year, he spent the summer working in Utah salt mines (as he said, “to convince him of the value of education”). Bob returned home to Indiana and rejoined NROTC as a sophomore for the fall 1946 semester at Purdue University in West Lafayette, to study Electrical Engineering. Upon graduation with his EE degree in August 1949, he was commissioned an Ensign and reported to the destroyer USS Borie in Norfolk, VA, to start a 28- year Naval Officer career. He served aboard Borie until June 1951, making cruises as Assistant Gunnery Officer and ASW Officer to the North Atlantic, Mediterranean Sea, and the Sea of Japan where he saw combat in the Korean War.
He left the ‘destroyer Navy’ via a transfer to the Submarine Service, starting right away with Submarine School in New London, CT. Over the next 17 years, he served aboard submarines USS Dogfish, USS Bergall, USS Segundo, and he commanded the USS Becuna and Submarine Division Twenty-One.
He also enjoyed overseas assignments on the staffs of U.S. Naval Forces Europe in London, England, and U.S. Southern Command in Rodman, Panama. He then returned to the U.S. for duty as Professor of Naval Science and Commanding Officer NROTC at University of Oklahoma. His final assignment in the Navy was as Commanding Officer of the repair ship USS Hector, out of Naval Shipyard Mare Island, CA. Captain Anderson retired in March 1977 and after nearly a year of touring the country in a motor home, settled in Freeport, ME. During his naval career, Bob had completed additional schooling at Naval Post Graduate School (1958); Armed Forces Staff College, Norfolk, VA (1965); and he earned an M.A. degree in International Relations in 1967 from the University of Southern California.
Bob enjoyed shooting, and competed on rifle and pistol teams in high school, college and in the Navy. He qualified as a Life Master with the high-powered rifle and was awarded a “Distinguished Marksman” badge in 1959 when he was also the Pacific Fleet Individual Champion in high-powered rifle competition.
As a longtime Freeport resident, Bob was active in the community as a volunteer worker for Freeport Community Services, Lyric Theater in South Portland, Maine Maritime Museum, Mid Coast Hospital, and he served as an EMT and driver with the Freeport Rescue Unit for eleven years. He was a substitute teacher in the area for many years, where he annoyed many kids by expecting the use of proper grammar and by actually being able to teach the assigned advanced math or science curriculum.
He was an enthusiastic sailor who with his spouse, cruised the Maine coast each year from 1979 until selling his Bristol-32 “B-Hive IV” in 1996. After vacationing in Berchtesgaden, Germany, Bob was an avid skier till his knee gave out. He was also a lifelong Red Cross blood & platelet donor, giving over 9 gallons of blood. He was a great Purdue basketball fan (and therefore a fan of whoever beat Notre Dame), and loved OU football from his days on staff there. He was extraordinarily well-read, loving Sherlock Holmes and poetry, and had wide-ranging knowledge that allowed him to carry on a conversation with anyone about anything.
Bob was also a member of various local and national organizations: Thomas Means Club, Freeport; AF&AM Masonic Lodge 23, Freeport; U.S. Submarine Veterans, Inc; member and former Board member of Harraseeket Yacht Club and the Casco Bay Council of the Navy League; life member American Legion Post 83, Freeport; life member of the Military Officers Assn of America and the National Rifle Association.
Not having a personality suited to living alone, Bob was married to three wonderful women: Barbara Joyce Wyman (1954-91), Laura Deane “Cricket” Field (1993- 98), and Carol Fenn (m.1999). With Barbara, Bob raised three children during his Navy career, and he had twelve grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Bob was predeceased by his parents, his wife Barbara (1991), his wife Cricket (1998), his older brother Carl, and a grandson Sean. He will be greatly missed by his wife Carol of Brunswick, ME; son Brian Anderson and his wife Michelle of Shelley, ID; daughter Beth Ewerth and her husband Keith, of Midland, MI; and daughter Beverly Diller and her husband Marty, of Brunswick, ME; a brother, Bill Anderson and his wife Kay of Littleton, CO; his sister Sharon Gard and her husband Lou of Tucson, AZ; and his many grandchildren, great-grandchildren and nieces and nephews.
A memorial service will be held at 1pm on Monday, 23 July, at the South Freeport Congregational Church.
In lieu of flowers, Bob asked that memorial contributions be made to: U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation, 701 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Suite 123, Washington, DC 20004-2608, or at: www.NavyMemorial.org.
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