Robert Walter Harris

“Little Bobby” was born Robert Walter Landgraver to Walter and Louise (Frank) Landgraver in Youngstown, Ohio on Easter Sunday, April 8, 1928. Walter Landgraver, his father, was from a large German immigrant family, and his mother, Louise was from a conservative Jewish family. While the marriage and the baby were still very young, the Great Depression hit hard, and the little family came under severe pressure from the economy as well as from other troubles. The couple soon separated and was divorced, partly as a result of pressure from their own families.

Bobby was initially bounced around from foster home to home, away from both his mother and his father. Finally, he went to live with a great aunt and uncle, Sam and Grace Harris, also in Youngstown. He was not adopted by them. In normal conversation he always referred to Grace Harris as his mother, but he always knew his mother was actually no longer a part of his life, and this troubled him all his life.

In fact, he was not sure that he ever again saw his biological mother, Louise, alive, although he believes he may have just one time. He believed he remembered being dressed up and taken by relatives to her funeral when he was just a few years old. He never knew his father until decades later, when they met one time for a few hours.

Bob attended grammar school and high school there in Youngstown, but also spent much of his childhood in other places like San Antonio, Texas, Winfield, Kansas, and even Kentucky, where Grace and Sam’s daughter and son-in-law, Gladys and Bob Wehr, were living. In fact, Gladys and Bob Wehr were very much parental figures and role models for young Bob, and the Wehr family always remained family in every sense of the word. He was always very thankful to the Wehr’s and the Harris’ for caring for him and giving him a home.

In the early 40’s WWII was raging, and every young American male wanted to get into the fight, including Bob, but he was just a little too young. Finally, just as the war was drawing to a close, he made two giant steps: he changed his last name to Harris, still without formal adoption, and he enlisted as a 17 year-old in the United States Marine Corps. He was therefore officially a WWII veteran, even though he never saw action in the war.

After his brief stint in the USMC he attended Kent State University in Ohio for a semester or so. During the days at Kent State, he lived on bologna, hot dogs and sauerkraut. In later years, when things got hard on the way to some goal, he’d say “sometimes you’ve got to eat a yard of baloney to get through to where you want to go,” a reference to the bologna days at college. Pretty quickly, sheer financial need forced him to quit college and get to work.

So Bob began working at Carnegie Steel mill in Youngstown, bought an old black Plymouth to get around, and shortly thereafter began dating a certain Eldora Loy, whom he’d already known for a while through double dates. Bob and Eldora’s first date was a New Year’s Eve party. Their second date was a wrestling match featuring the famous Gorgeous George, who ripped the ear off an opponent that landed at Eldora’s feet. Very romantic. On the third date they went to see a movie called the Snake Pit, which was about an insane asylum. Even with this scary start to their romantic life, they only needed to date about a year before getting married on September 1, 1949.

Bob worked two jobs and began to train as a tool and die maker, even getting involved in an entrepreneurial enterprise with a buddy. Among other things, they made sparkly plastic and metal Christmas tree decorations. Eldora was working, too. In the middle of all the work, their daughter Susan was born; that was in 1950. Tom was born in 1953. They bought their first house in 1954. During this time Bob began working in the machine shop at Packard Electric in Warren, Ohio.

In 1960, Bob had the idea and it was decided that the family should move to warm, sunny, adventure-filled Phoenix, Arizona to escape the Ohio cold and wind and hail and lay-offs. In Phoenix they initially stayed with relatives, then they bought a few apartments in 1961, moved into one of them, and managed the rest for several years. During this time, in 1962, their third child, Rob, was born.

Soon after arriving in Arizona Bob had begun working for General Electric as a tool and die maker, making molds for all kinds of plastic parts for their mainframe computer hardware division. General Electric was later partly absorbed into Honeywell, and Bob continued his role there, eventually becoming manager of the tool and die and machine shop. It was a long-term career, but when Honeywell began to cut back, Bob moved on to Karsten Manufacturing, where he was a mold maker for Ping golf clubs. He loved his work. He always enjoyed working with engineers to make things. The engineers would come up with a theoretical idea and a drawing of what needed to be made, but then he got to figure out how to make it and get it to actually work, all while allowing the engineers to continue to believe it was all their idea. He always saw his every day work as the kind of thing other guys did as a hobby; he was thankful to be able to get paid for it.

Early on in Arizona, the Harris family was part of Creighton Christian Church on East Thomas Road, where he served as a deacon and 5th grade Sunday school teacher. After moving to the northwest valley, they became part of Northwest Christian Church, where Bob served as a deacon, a Sunday school teacher for junior high and other kids, and later an elder. In around 1986, Bob and Eldora began to attend a new church plant called Palm Valley Christian Church.

Bob retired in 1992 and enjoyed travel with Eldora. They visited Europe a few times as well as Hawaii and many other places around the US until health started to slow him down.

Bob is survived by Eldora, who, among so many other things, will dearly miss drinking the morning coffee and reading the paper with him every day at the kitchen table – sometimes for four hours. He’s also survived by his daughter, Susan Chewning, and by his two sons, Thomas (Tom) and Robert (Rob). There are also 7 grandchildren, who are Susan’s grown boys Kavin and Devin, Tom and wife Marcia’s grown children Melissa, Tiffany and Joseph Tyler (Ty), and Rob and wife Carla’s teenage children Ryan and Alissa. As of this writing there are 4 great-grandchildren with one more on the way.

Arrangements under the direction of Sunland Memorial Park, Mortuary & Cremation Center, Sun City, AZ.