Robert Edward Day of Tarpon Springs, Florida died on Wednesday, January 25th, 2023 at the age of 91 after a battle with throat cancer.  He is survived by his three children Rob, Eva and Matt.

Born in Philadelphia during the worst years of the Great Depression, he listened to FDR’s “…day that will live in infamy” speech on the radio when Pearl Harbor was bombed.

Bob graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point before receiving his high school certificate of graduation.  His brother, Tom, had been offered a “first alternate” appointment to West Point which meant he would have to take an entrance exam and outperform the “principal appointee” for admission. However, Tom had accepted a different scholarship from the Navy.  So, Bob’s father managed to convince the officials at West Point to allow him to take the exam for entrance while he was still in 11th grade.  After successfully besting the principal appointee, he entered the academy in 1948 and graduated in the class of 1952.

He was assigned to the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborn Division.  He completed 45 jumps and earned the senior parachutist badge.  On the way to his next assignment at Camp Drum, he was ordered to march in the 1953 inaugural parade for President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Washington D.C.  He served in Korea as an aide to General Robert L. Howze Jr. and felt privileged for the many encounters and experiences of his association with him.

He was then assigned to Brazil for a year to become fluent in Portuguese so that he could return to West Point as an instructor in the Department of Foreign Languages.  From there it was on to Philadelphia where he attended Temple University Medical School and he and his wife, Gloria had their first child, Rob.  He then did his internship at Madigan Army Hospital at Fort Lewis near Tacoma, Washington amid the beauty of the thick forests in the northwest where he and Gloria had their second child, Eva.  A short time later they separated and Bob moved to Pensacola where he enrolled in the Navy School of Aviation Medicine to become a Flight Surgeon for the Army.  He later obtained a Master’s of Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

During the war in Vietnam, he was appointed Division Surgeon and Commander of the 326th Medical Battalion in the 101st Airborn Division where he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for volunteering to fly in near zero visibility through a monsoon to pick up a severely burned patient from Tan My Island.

When he returned state-side, he became the Executive Officer and Chief of Professional Services at Lyster Army Hospital at Fort Rucker, Alabama.  There he met his second wife, Ann, and had a third child, Matt.  He retired from the Army in September of 1972 and went into private practice in Clearwater, Florida.  In retirement, he sailed to the Bahamas with his third wife, Sherry and was later married to his fourth wife, Carletta.

He spent his later years in a modest home in Tarpon Springs, exploring the islands and shores while sculling along the Intracoastal Waterway and going for walks with his dog, Marley and occasionally eating dinner with his kids when they would come for visits.

Bob watched the sun set from the Snoqualmie Pass in the Cascade mountains.  He saw the dust from mystery vehicles on hidden roads across the Demilitarized Zone in South Korea.  He felt the cold kisses of tiny snowflakes on an arctic survival trip to Fairbanks, Alaska, drank cafezinho in Rio De Janeiro and ate razor clams dug on the Pacific beaches of the rainforests of the Olympic penninsula.  He listened to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #3 and Pat Methany’s New Chautauqua. He cried over the loss of men under his command, was instructed in English by President Eisenhower’s son, John, and drank Old Granddad bourbon in the back of a car with a girl outside the gates of West Point near Highland Falls, NY.

Bob enjoyed the outdoors.  He loved sailing, rowing and generally roaming, adventuring and exploring.  He had the life of a wandering adventurer, unfettered and free to survey the world with the lasting satisfaction of complete independence.

Death is just forgetting that you ever lived, and he since he has forgotten his life, having gone off to flirt with the eternity of unconsciousness, we will remember it for him, and wish him fair winds and following seas along the way.