Robert McTyier

March 22, 1931--January 1, 2024

Robert Jr., Dad, Grandpa and Affable Bob passed away on the first morning of the new year from encephalopathy resulting from Covid-19. He was 92 years, 9 months old, having outlived the longest living McTyier relative in recorded history, his mother.

Born to Allie Seay Goodwin, and Robert B. McTyier Sr., in Memphis, TN, Bob was a low-birth-weight baby. His mother’s obstetrician advised her at the time that her first born child would be delicate and need to be protected. Allie took that advice seriously and protected him by discouraging engagement in overly physical activities and limiting his exposure to anything that might cause harm. A formal photo taken of him as a seven-year-old shows him as dainty, Little Lord Fauntleroy persona—with dirty fingernails, indicating his mother was not successful in keeping his boyhood engagement with the physical world curtailed. His mother’s concern for his physical capacity to endure exercise did not extend to him earning money making newspaper deliveries, but did extend to him riding roller coasters, a forbidden activity. When he was twelve, he took his earned newspaper route money and went to ride all the roller coasters in town at the time—Memphis once hosted five or six small amusement parks--as many times as he wanted to, all day long, without his mother’s permission. He was not harmed and felt nothing but exhilaration from the experience. He went home and told his mother, “I can do stuff.”

Bob graduated from Treadwell High School in Memphis, Class of 1949, where he met the woman who would be his wife for 70 years, Beverly Jean Dilliard. During high school, he began playing clarinet for five-person jazz-swing dance groups. As the popular music of the day grew to include more saxophone, he taught himself that instrument to keep his group popular and employed. A music promotor from Desoto County, MS, just south of Memphis, made him first chair clarinet in a professional swing band, and pointed to Bob as the example others in the group should follow. The promoter was ready to represent him if Bob wanted to go pro. When he matriculated at the Georgia Institute of Technology in fall of 1949, music was still Bob’s avocation.

While pursuing his Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering at Georgia Tech, Bob married Beverly Jean Dilliard on New Year’s Eve 1950, also in DeSoto County, MS. They left a dance where Bob was playing atop the Peabody Hotel, to travel across the state line and wake a justice of the peace to marry them. Bob continued to play lead clarinet and saxophone in swing bands around Atlanta, until his graduation in 1953. Upon graduation he had job offers from Monsanto, DuPont, and Dole Pineapple. He chose to go with DuPont, as their offer allowed him to go serve his obligatory time in the U.S. Army but count those years as service years toward company employment. As he faced deployment to Fort Bliss, Texas, where he would serve in the Electronic Warfare division, “AAA” Battery, Bob had an epiphany: the life of a travelling musician was no life for a man with a wife and family on the way. He could not take his instruments to basic training. He pawned his clarinet and saxophone for money to help his wife and baby —and never looked back.

The trajectory of Bob’s thirty four-year career as a chemical engineer intersected with significant milestones of growth for the DuPont company, as well as the synthetics fibers industry overall. In June 1969, he joined the original twenty-one American managers at the “gargantuan fiber facilities in

Uentrop, West Germany,” to help execute John R. Wheaton’s management model of international expansion DuPont was trying out in Europe as a precursor to moving into Iran. i When offered, Bob declined to extend his overseas assignment to Tehran, opting instead to return to the States, to Waynesboro, Virginia, where DuPont held one of its largest fiber operation plants. While at Waynesboro, Bob was one of the first to recognize that DuPont’s success in expanding use of synthetic fiber for carpet also lead to increase in non-biodegradable waste in landfills and worked to bring considerations of the environmental impact of the company’s products to operations planning. When DuPont over-recruited out of colleges and incented some of their old guard to early retire, Bob used the resources offered to create a consulting company and ended his career helping a chemical start-up, with a method to infuse deeper hues in synthetic fibers, grow. While living in Waynesboro, he periodically attended St. John’s Episcopal Church and was of member of the Waynesboro Chorale Society, where he served as treasurer.

Bob and Beverly retired to Tarpon Springs, FL, in 2001, and he came to love the Greek culture and traditions of the place and sitting with his feet in the water at nearby beaches. He and his wife were active in the management and served as officers of the Tarpon Pointe Condominium Association and developed long friendships with the other residents. He joined and much enjoyed evenings spent at the Happier Hour Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting held at sunset on Tarpon Avenue. While his children and grandchildren did not experience him as an alcoholic, the Happier Hour meetings provided a forum where he could dispense and receive empathy, and good conversation. No one objected when he started going at eighty-five. He remained sober until his passing.

In 2017, he and his wife relocated to Little River, SC area, to be nearer to care-taking family. Beverly passed in 2019, and Bob found a new late in life love to spend time with at his home in the River Park community. One of his favorite outings in his new, last hometown was The South’s Grandest Christmas Show at the Alabama Theater and he was there at the start of this past holiday season, tapping his toes, and clapping to the beat.

Left behind to remember Affable Bob’s abiding and kind spirit and ready smile, are his younger brother, Douglas A. McTyier, his children and children-in-laws, Dahna and Neal, Jean and Mark, Lisa and Gary, and James (Jay) and Todd; grandchildren Cara (Kit), Zachary (Shannon), Tommy, Allison (Richard), Jeremy (Linda), Shannon, Edward Dean Jr. (DJ), great-grandchildren Emma, Trevor, Kira, Hannah, Luka, Neo, River, Joshua, Andrew, Molly, and Max; and great-great grandchildren, Franklin, Zeus, and to-be-named Haberman baby coming this year.

Bob will be cremated, and his remains scattered by family later in the year. Arrangements are through Lee Funeral Home, 11840 Highway 90, Little River, SC, 29566. Donations in his memory to Kind Keepers No-Kill Animal Rescue, North Myrtle Beach, SC, would be fitting, and much appreciated.