Posted on 08/09/2018
Robert Eyman Totman (July 31, 1925 July 19, 2018)
Bob Totman passed away peacefully July 19, 2018, a scant three months after his wife of 69 years, Dru Totman. Bob was born in San Francisco, CA, on July 31, 1925, the same day as Dru. He grew up on the family ranch in California's Central Valley, the older of two sons. Bob enlisted in the US Navy in 1943 and did his initial training at Farragut Naval Base on Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho. He briefly attended the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, but upon the end of World War II, left the Navy to finish college at Stanford University where he earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. After graduation, he returned to the Central Valley to manage the family ranch but was more interested in the mechanization than farming. In 1949, he married Dru, whom he had known in school but had not dated. Their daughter, Judy, was born in 1950. Shortly thereafter, his mother sold the ranch and Bob went to work for Douglas Aircraft in Southern California. He and Dru didn't like Southern California, so he returned north, working for Guy F. Atkinson Company as a mechanic on the second bore on the Waldo Grade and then the Cherry Valley Dam. Their son, Chuck, was born while he was on the Cherry Valley Dam project. Bob went to work for United Airlines in San Francisco in November, 1955, and worked there 33 years before retiring. Bob was intelligent and congenial and a loving and attentive father. He was the consummate outdoorsman, and the family camped all around the West and in the lake district of Minnesota. Dad could fix anything and build anything. After he retired, Bob and Dru traveled extensively to Europe, Asia, Oceania, and Africa, concluding their travel in their late 80s with a seven-week cruise that ventured to Easter Island as far south as Antarctica. When Dru and Bob moved to Saratoga Retirement Community (SRC), he was active on numerous committees. He became the campus computer expert, the go-to guy for any and all problems that residents (and SRC!) had with their computers. Bob is survived by his children, Chuck Totman (Janet) and Judy Parrish (Don Isham); his granddaughters, Michelle Totman and Jennifer Claassen (Clint), and his great-grandson, Logan; his brother, Bill (Sharon); and their beloved rescue dog, Winnie. Bob's ashes will be interred alongside Dru's at The First Presbyterian Church of Burlingame, CA, which they attended for many years before moving to Saratoga. A memorial in celebration of their lives will be held at a later date..
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