Will This WWII Veteran Slow Down? Maybe

Slow down at 92? Maybe just a little


By VICKI BASHOR

STRYKER ,OHIO— “I guess I was a workaholic,” admitted Alonzo Robert “Bob” Clark, 92, of Stryker.

The World War II Navy veteran has been a jack-of-all-trades, first clocking in 30 years as a jobber and distributor for Texaco right after the war, on the route running between the two former bulk plants in Bryan and Stryker.

He then substituted as a bus driver for the Stryker School District for more than 30 years, logged 28 years as a volunteer firefighter, and was a substitute mail carrier for 16 years.

Clark says he was born in 1917 “on the route between Bryan and Stryker,” and moved to Stryker officially when he was 2 years old.His Father, J.P. Clark, and mother, Mina (Hyatt) Clark, began a trucking business and the Hyatt name goes back to a few relations who built stores in Bryan, Clark said.

“And Seth Hyatt was the first Williams County surveyor,” he said.

Clark says he still would be working, if his wife Georgia “Midge” would let him.

“You’d come home complaining that your back hurts,” she said, laughingly.

The Clarks will celebrate 70 years of marriage this Nov. 22, and marrying proved to be one of Clark’s hardest jobs.

“We got married in New Haven, Ind., by a Methodist preacher,” said Midge, who was born in 1918, one of seven children in rural Ayersville.

“We got our license in Defiance, went to Indiana to get married and we found out it wasn’t legal,” Bob added. “So we came back and Judge E.W. Costello in Defiance married us.”

Bob was a signalman in the Navy from 1944-46 while Midge raised their two children, Larry and Louise, back home in Stryker.

Larry, 68, is a 1959 graduate of Stryker High School and was his class’s salutatorian, while Louise, now 64, was born mentally and physically handicapped.

Her condition brought about historic change within the county.

The Clarks began the Williams County Association for Retarded Children 55 years ago, which helped lead to establishment of the Williams County Board of MRDD.

Clark was its first president, and he said it was one of his “favorite” jobs of all.

“I loved those kids as a bus driver, and I spoiled those kids,” he said. “But at the top for me is starting the association.”

He was busy with another occupation, too: inventor. It started with a simple musing on his wife’s part. She wanted a pink gardening hose.

“Midge wanted a pink hose, so I made her 100 feet of pink hose,” he explained. “I went from that to manufacturing biodiesel fuel in a three-barrel refinery.

“I invented two pumps and I have a patent on one of them,” he added. The official patent shows a complex diagram for a rotary pump with a symmetrical bypass and rotor with mounted vanes.

The war veteran, oil route driver, volunteer firefighter, bus driver and mail carrier, husband and father, inventor, and advocate for the disadvantaged, is admittedly “restless” in his retirement years.

“Now I just don’t have enough to do,” he said, smiling.

His wife is the same way. Bob said he came home recently from visiting with a neighbor and found Midge trimming their backyard trees.

“Oh, they weren’t such big branches,” she countered. “I’ve always done my own housework and I’m used to it.”

The Clarks enjoy coming to Bryan for city band performances, playing cards with good friends now and then, and are members of the American Legion and Rotary Club.

Bob has been considering taking up roller skating again, although the rinks are harder to find these days. He said he’s talked with the American Legion, which used to have a rink upstairs, about bringing the skating back. Alas, the insurance precludes it happening, he said.

“He does things like this when I’m gone,” Midge said.

“I still want to try it,” he added, smiling.

 

Wow! Now that is spirit. Can we all be like that?

 

The war veteran, oil route driver, volunteer firefighter, bus driver and mail carrier, husband and father, inventor, and advocate for the disadvantaged, is admittedly “restless” in his retirement years.....

Looks like I need to step up to the plate! Bob, thanks for the inspiration Great story M Worker, I needed the motivation

Mark