Robert J. Hoyle, Jr.

Bob was born May 14, 1920, in the small upstate New York town of Auburn, to Robert J. and Norma Eliza (Wood) Hoyle. He spent a happy childhood there, pursuing his love of the outdoors as a Boy Scout, on skiing trips to the Adirondack Mountains and sailing on the Finger Lakes. At 15, he proved himself a very good scout, indeed, one winter day when he raced to a freezing pond and plunged in, saving the life of a neighbor's 7-year-old son. The local American Legion post gave him an award for bravery and the grateful parents gave him a very handsome new suit.

Bob was an excellent student, graduating in 1937 from Auburn Senior High School, and in 1941 he earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University. He received a Reserve Officers Training Corps commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Forces in August 1941 and was called to active duty, reporting to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. Following the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, he was sent to Australia as an aircraft engineering officer, in charge of crews that repaired and maintained bombers and fighter planes at Townsville Air Depot in Queensland. He also served in New Guinea, Leyte Gulf and Manila, Philippine Islands. On one occasion, while still stationed in Australia, he was asked to take a break from fixing battered aircraft to repair comedian Jack Benny's broken violin during a United Service Organizations tour stop. In January 1946, he was discharged from the service, having achieved the rank of captain.

After the war, Bob accepted a position as an engineer with Eastman Kodak Co. in Rochester, N.Y. Returning to school in 1950, he obtained a master's degree in forestry at the New York State College of Forestry in Syracuse. In 1951, in Rochester, he met and married Rosemary Dowswell, an artist from Royal Oak, Mich. The first of their two daughters was born while he was still in graduate school, and their second daughter was born three years later. As an assistant professor of wood products engineering, he taught and did research at Syracuse until 1958, when he moved with his family to Lewiston to take a position at Potlatch Forests Inc. Here, Bob and Rosemary built the home in which they lived the rest of their lives.

At Potlatch's wood products research department - a group of about 30 people who developed numerous timber-based products for the company - Bob was especially responsible for developing a system for machine-grading lumber that became widely used in the U.S. and abroad. In 1969, he left Potlatch to become a professor of civil engineering at Washington State University in Pullman, retiring in 1985. During his years at WSU, his work occasionally took him overseas, most happily to Costa Rica for several months in 1979 and 1980, an experience he remembered with fondness for the rest of his life. Following his work at WSU, he practiced as a consulting structural engineer until 2000. His engineering legacy includes an underground utility system at Point Barrow, Alaska, a highway bridge on the Potlatch River and many lesser projects in and around the Lewiston area.

Bob was active in professional societies related to lumber and wood products throughout his career and served as president of the Society of Wood Science and Technology. He wrote a textbook on timber design that has been in use since the 1970s.

In midlife he pursued a boyhood interest in aviation and became a licensed airplane pilot, flying his Piper Tri-Pacer, which he dubbed "The Happy Warrior," throughout the West for more than 30 years. It was a great pleasure for him to take family and friends up for flights, even when on one memorable afternoon his plane's engine conked out over the mountains near Orofino and he had to use a cool head and fine piloting skills to make an emergency landing. He was also a member of the Pearson Air Park Historical Museum in Vancouver, Wash.

The history of the Lewis and Clark Expedition was one of Bob's favorite hobbies and he became a scholar on the subject, writing several papers. He was a member of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation. He and his late wife, Rosemary, were members of the Congregational-Presbyterian Church in Lewiston. Bob loved to write letters and maintained correspondence with many former students, World War II veterans and friends in the U.S., Sweden, Denmark, Japan and South Africa.

He is survived by his brother, Walter W. Hoyle of Fayetteville, N.Y.; by daughters Dana and Anita; and by his grandchildren, Miranda and Niels.

A memorial is planned for 1 p.m. Dec. 12 at the Congregational-Presbyterian Church, 709 Sixth St., in Lewiston. Donations may be made in his memory to the Lewis-Clark Humane Society or the Humane Society of the Palouse Inc.