OBITUARY Robert “Bob” Merrill September 3, 1940 – January 22, 2019 Duty. Honor. Country.
As a cadet at the US Military Academy at West Point, Bob Merrill was in the audience when General Douglas McArthur uttered those three famous words during the General’s farewell address to the Corps of Cadets on May 12th, 1962. They ring as true to him today as when he first heard them and have been his leitmotiv through life. Bob is the son of a ñther born in 1898, several years before the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.
He often marvels about the fact that, in the space ofjust two short generations, that son became one ofthe outstanding helicopter test pilots in the United States, working on programs that would change the helicopter’s battle role forever, enabling it to become the ‘horse” ofthe modern airbome cavalry. “My father started off, back in the Depression, as a machinist and a tool and die maker and became what we today would call an industrial engineer. I was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a city of about fifty thousand people at the time of my birth.
Dad worked for the Simmons Company, the folks who made the mattresses, and as they moved him around to their various locations, the family moved too. He would set up the machinery as new plants were built, make sure everything was In good working order and, as soon as production began, we would move to the next location. That was usually a two to three year process.
From Wisconsin we moved to Dallas, Texas, where we lived till I was five, then to Virginia, back to Wisconsin and Ohio in that order. “After twenty-eight years with Simmons, my father decided to go into busmess for himself and moved the family to Greenville, Texas, about fifty miles northeast of Dallas. He had rented a building there and had purchased a machine that processed cotton called a GarnetMachine.
It cost twenty-five thousand dollars, a lot of money at that time. Sadly and unfortunately, the family from whom we were renting — parents and four boys — were all tragically killed in a traffic accident shortly after we arrived. That set up an immediate flurry of uncertainty and potential legal entanglements, so we moved again, this time to Bryan, Texas, near College Station, where the International Furniture Company, a local furniture maker, had promised to buy all the processed cotton he could put through his machine.
But again fate intervened, first with a tornado that destroyed almost all the buildings around us, and then by a labor strike at the furniture company which, effectively, slowed my father’s business to a crawl. Before long, he became ill and, though just fifty-seven years old, quickly had a fatal heart attack. This was in 1956 and I was in junior high school at the time.
Bob Merrill had two brothers, Bill, thirteen years older, who was working in Wisconsin, and Don, nine years older and still living at home. The two younger boys tried hard to save their father’s company, first finishing the machinery set up process. But even though Bob went to school full time and then spent another eight hours at night trying to keep the business going, they were unsuccessful, finally giving up their father’s dream and moving back to Wisconsin.
“My brother and I pondered a short while over what to do but we soon realized that the two of us just could not keep that business alive. So we locked up the place and threw the key into the field across the street. Those were some pretty lean times with lots of cheese and beans.
’ Back in Kenosha, Bob entered Mary D. Bradford High School where he did well scholastically, ran track, played football, made a lot of friends. But the biggest story of his high school years turned out to be a teacher named Juanita Sorenson. “She was my science teacher and taught us chemistry in my junior year.
My mother received a social security check and worked as a cook in an Italian restaurant at night where she earned a small amount of additional income. We lived in a small apartment that rented for fifty dollars a month and I earned some spending money by stocking shelves in a grocery store after school. Seventeen at the time, I was a straight ‘A’ chemistry student when Ms. Sorenson began to encourage me as far as college was concerned.
In addition to teaching science, she was also a Guidance Counselor and took special interest in helping to lead me towards a future that included higher education, actually looking into programs for me like Naval ROTC, scholarships at the University of Wisconsin and other such opportunities. “One day she brought me an article from the newspaper announcing that Senator William Proxmire was accepting applications to the military academies from students in his state. Thinking that I had little if any chance of receiving such an appointment, I was about to ignore it but she persisted and in so doing taught me one of life’s most valuable lessons: that the worst answer that anyone can ever give you is ‘no’….
and that, if you never try, the answer is a definite ‘no’. Put another way, as Geraldine Ferraro said when she became the first woman to run for the Vice Presidency of the United States: ‘You can’t win if you don ‘t run. ‘ “So I decided to run, submitted the paperwork and found myself boarding a train for Milwaukee to interview with the Senator’s staff, a pretty scary event, as I recall, for an average high school junior.
I took the scholastic examinations and the physical down at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, and ended up getting a congressional competitive appointment to West Point from Senator Proxmire. That meant that his office submitted the names of four people and the staff at the academy made their selection from that group. Somehow, I was their choice and so I became an entering plebe in the West Point class of 1963.
I know that would not have happened to me, had it not been for Juanita Sorenson and I have always been thankñl to her for the interest she showed in my future when I was her high school student. On a July mid-summer morning, Bob boarded a Greyhound bus for the eighteen hour ride to West Point, carrying a small gray bag that held an extra pair of shoes, a change of underwear and his shaving gear. Two other Merrills joined him in the entering class, one of whom was a political appointment from Central Wisconsin who did not make it past the first year.
The second left because of academics in the second year. Like most alumni, Bob loves “The Point”, as West Point is fondly called by its graduates, perhaps in retrospect more than during the actual experience. He made it through and is rightfully proud ofthat accomplishment.
“Entering any one ofthe service academies is a difficult experience. It’s like being caught up in a hurricane with everything happening so fast and it seems especially chaotic to an eighteen year old kid who has just left the ‘safe’ surroundings of home. There are many good moments, of course, but lots of tough ones too and you really have to want the end result very badly to stick it out.
My class started with 735 plebes and graduated 504 — so roughly, one out of three entering cadets did not graduate. “One of the high points of my four years was being in the hall to hear General McArthur’s famous ‘Duty-Honor-Country’ speech in 1962. I think it must have been a little like having been at Gettysburg to hear President Lincoln.
I am sure we did not realize the importance of that speech at the time. For our thirty-fifth reunion four years ago, our class decided to purchase five hundred copies of a painting ofthat event done by artist Paul Steucke. In addition to his signature, five others appear: Bob Hope, because almost all of our class fought in Vietnam and met him over there at one time or another… .
. Jim Ellis, our cadet First Captain…… Colin Powell Norman Schwartzkopf of Gulf War ñme and William Westmoreland who was the Superintendent at West Point at the time ofthe speech. We sold them as a ftndraiser for our class and Jeanne and I feel privileged to have one ofthose five hundred copies in our Mountainbrook Village home.
Upon graduation in June of 1963, Bob Merrill was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Field Artillery. He had really wanted to fly, and twelve percent ofthat graduating class could have chosen another branch of the service, but his level of confidence in himself, even after the four grueling West Point years, was not high enough to make the move. “I was in perfect position to choose the Air Force.
The entire class was divided into thirds and they would then take the top of each third, then the second person and so on, to come up with the twelve percent ofthe entire class. That way they made sure that the Army did not lose all of its top people to the other branches. At the time, what worried me, was not making it through the Air Force flight school program — so I decided to stay in the Army, which I had grown to love, and to worry about flying later in my career.
“I headed for Fort Sill, Oklahoma, for my Field Artillery basics, then to jump school in Fort Benning, Georgia, where I eamed my paratrooper’s wings. A two year assignment to Fort Carson, Colorado came next with learning cycles that included experiences as a forward observer, baËery executive officer, and generally getting to feel comfortable in knowing how to work with and command the troops. By 1965 1 applied for and was accepted to Army Flight School, going first to Fort Wolters, Texas and then Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to learn how to fly rotary wing aircraft which civilians commonly call helicopters.
“I learned how to fly a basic variety of Army helicopters and was immediately assigned to Vietnam, via Fort Benning, Georgia, with the 161 st Aviation Company and its UH-I (Huey) choppers. We crossed the Pacific on a twenty-three day voyage on board the USNS Upshur. You can imagine what the troops renamed her!
For the first three months in Vietnam I flew troop carriers, then spent nine months piloting helicopter gunships. During that period I logged about seven hundred hours which is a pretty heavy schedule. You fly only when necessary, of course, when someone on the ground is in trouble or a planned offensive operation needs that kind of air power — never just to cruise around.
So every time you launch you begin to feel like you’re being tossed around In a washing machine — very emotional times yet exciting as well. Intense is, perhaps, another definition: as the four years at West Point were an intense experience, so were the twelve months in Vietnam which spanned a March to March period between 1966 and 1967 During that time I was promoted to Captain. This was the very beginning of the US Army helicopter program in Vietnam and most ofthe pilots were still commissioned officers.
Later, during my time as an instructor, we were tuming out about six hundred pilots a month and most ofthem were non-commissioned Warrant Officers. Finishing his one year tour in Vietnam, Captain Merrill returned to the States to be stationed at Hunter Army Air Field in Savannah, Georgia. Formerly Hunter AFB, the Army had received the base from the Air Force in order to make it into a helicopter flight school.
He became a flight instructor in Huey Cobra aircraft, which were the first helicopters actually built as a gunship with two person tandem seating. After instructing pilot trainees for the Huey Cobras for two years, he started to take his own flight training agam in small, piper-cub-like single engine fixed wing observation planes, designated as 0-1 “Bird Dogs” and L-19’s and later in a higher performance twin engine turboprop plane known as an OV-I Mohawk. That training took place at Fort Rucker, Alabama “I was stationed in twenty-two different places during my twenty years in the Army — and even though that is a lot, you do get used to it.
After the Mohawk training, I found myself on a commercial airplane heading back to Vietnam for my second tour. The plane had barely touched down when I was told that my mom had died and that I could return home on thirty days emergency leave. I did fly back but stayed only fifteen days, then chose to return to the war in Vietnam.
It just did not seem right to me to stay longer, having buddies risking their lives during flight times that should have been mine. “As it turned out, I should have stayed home. After arrival, I was assigned to an aviation company within the First Cavalry Division and asked if I could fly the next day.
‘Sure’ was my reply— ‘that’s why I’m here’. So the very next day I flew eight and a half hours of combat in the Huey Cobra helicopter gunship. I tumbled into bed that night, still not having unpacked my bags because I was going to fly again the next day, when, after midnight, we were on the receiving end of an incoming mortar attack.
An 82mm mortar shell struck the hootch I was living in and I ended up with two broken legs, a broken arm and shell fragments in many other parts of my body. I was not going to fly a combat mission the next day and my bags were still unpacked. ‘Next day I was ‘med-evacuated’ to a hospital in Vietnam, then to Japan and then to Scott AFB in Illinois.
I had been back in Vietnam for just one day but, because of the injuries, that counted as a full tour for me. Savannah, Georgia was next, for seven months of recuperation. I often have thought of that incident and the randomness of it all, so often like the roll of the dice in war that gives some of us fairly minor, treatable wounds and others much more grave Injuries that change lives forever or, in even more extreme cases, end them.
“By early October, 1969, I was ready to fly again. In a scene right out ofthe movies, I limped to the office where I had to initiate the paperwork and left my cane outside in order to appear the picture of strength. Wien it came time to be checked out again in an actual helicopter, the Warrant Officer assigned to me said: ‘Tell you what, Captain — I’ll pre-flight the top of the aircraft and you do the bottom.
‘ He knew I’d have a tough time climbing to reach the higher parts of the chopper. Needless to say, I passed the flight test. Army regulations now intervened in Bob Merrill’s military career and returned him to the Field Artillery.
The Army looked at his aviation skills as additional duty but required him to maintain levels of proficiency in his basic branch. It was back to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, for a nine month school called an ‘Officer’s Advanced Course’, which included nuclear target analyzing, chemical, biological and radiological warfare. Merrill had several friends who had been to the Navy Test Pilot School at Patuxtent River in Maryland — called PAX in all the services —and after the schooling in Oklahoma, he thought he would like that kind oftraining and applied.
At first he was refused acceptance, because of a lack of hours in fixed wing aircraft. Though disappointed, he immediately applied for and was accepted to a graduate program at Georgia Tech, leading to a Masters of Aeronautical Engineering. But PAX, fortunately, rethought the merits ofturning away this combat hardened veteran and offered to waive their fixed wing requirements.
It didn’t take long for Captain Merrill to realize that, whereas he could probably go to Georgia Tech later in life, the offer from PAX would come only once. So by June, 1970, he headed for Maryland. ‘The PAX experience was great.
It was the only place in the country where they taught the whole helicopter syllabus which was to be very important to me in post-Army life. ‘Three years at Edwards AFB in California followed my time at PAX, during which I was promoted to Major. Then, in 1975, I was able to get an assignment to the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
The great thing there was that the Army made it possible for me to take graduate courses at Kansas State in Manhattan, Kansas, at the same time. So I was able to graduate from the Command and Staff College and also get a Master’s degree in industrial engineering from Kansas State at the same time. It was December, 1976.
‘The Army was next going to send me to Washington, DC, to become an Inspector General for three years, a job which really did not interest me. One day I was out mowing my lawn in Manhattan, Kansas, when an old buddy of mine called to ask what I was doing after Kansas. I told him that I already had orders to become an IG in Washington and wasn ‘t very pleased about it.
He told me that he was working with a guy from NASA who was looking for a test pilot. I had been told by the Army that there were no test pilot jobs. So I asked him who I should be looking up to discuss this opportunity and he replied: ‘Hold the phone, he is at my house tonight.
‘ It was one ofthose SNAFU situations you hear about in the service. NASA was being told by the Army that there were no test pilots available and the Army was telling me that there were no such jobs. Somehow, we got the right people together and I soon was sent to Langley AFB in Virginia where I joined an Army Structures Laboratory which was actually working for NASA.
My actual assignment was as a research pilot to the flight operations division of NASA. “I flew various aircraft there, doing a good bit of research on cockpit controls and displays and becoming one of only three test pilots to fly a plane called the RSRA (Rotor System Research Aircraft). That was a plane that could fly either as a helicopter or a fixed wing aircraft — or even as a combination ofthe two.
I stayed at Langley AFB till NASA moved all of its rotary wing technology to NASA-Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, just north of San Jose in 1978. While there I flew many different kinds ofaircraft, including jets, because while at Langley, I had been sent down to Houston to be checked out in NASA’s T-38 jet fighter. “We continued doing a lot of display and control research and we flew the RSRA, which we called the ‘flying wind tunnel’, much ofthe time.
You could actually fly that plane as a fixed wing airplane, because it had engines and wings that created lift, and treat the rotor mounted on top as a pure research mechanism because you did not have to rely on it for lifting the plane off the ground. The wings were actually movable into different positions so you could require the rotor to do partial or total lifts or many variations on those themes, depending on the wing’s positions. And you could do all that in flight, allowing you to map the performance of the rotor system in many different positions during one flight, instead of having to land and change wing positions on the ground.
‘The RSRA also had the first ejection seat ever designed for helicopters, a system that blew the rotor mechanism off first and then ejected the occupied seat. Fortunately, in five and a half years of work, I never had to use it. One ofthe two RSRA’s we flew is now in a museum in Fort Rucker, Alabama — so I know I’ve been around too long!
I also found myself on the History Channel when they did a story on the Apache helicopters with fellow MBV resident, Jerry Keyser in the back seat while I’m in the front. That will make you feel old too! ” Wiile at NASA’s facility in Ames, Major Merrill was promoted to Lt.
Colonel and, in 1981, he was transferred back to Edwards AFB to become the Deputy Commander ofthe Army Test Activity there, a job he held till his retirement from the Army when his twenty years were up in 1983. Magically, at just the right time, an ad appeared in the magazine Aviation Week and Space Technology, inserted by Hughes Helicopters, which said they were looking for a test pilot to fly their AH-64 Apache helicopters out of Mesa, Arizona. Even though he had never flown Hughes aircraft, he knew quite a few people in the company and, with his test pilot reputation preceding him, Colonel Merrill, US Army, Retired, got the job Beginning that November, Merrill started flying in the Apaches, working on their weapons, communications and navigation systems.
He became Chief Pilot of Experimental Flight Testing in 1984, a job he held for five years. Then he chose to revert to being a Senior Test Pilot again, and his service friend and soon-to-become Mountainbrook Village neighbor, Jerry Keyser, I I succeeded him in the chiefs position. “Several times in our careers, we worked for each other, sometimes he for me, sometimes I for him.
We were both helicopter test pilots, though Jerry is a graduate ofthe US Air Force Academy and spent his active service career years in the USAF. ’ In 1988, Bob began working on the second generation Apache helicopter called the Long Bow and was instrumental in the development ofthat aircraft till his retirement from the company in 1996. Soon after, the new Apache went into production for the Army and Merrill was called back to coordinate all ofthe Army’s training in the new machines, a task he did till his final retirement in 1998.
A coronary event in 1997 which resulted in the insertion of a stent in one of his arteries, effectively had ended his flying career. The years spent after his active Army career had been very rewarding, both professionally and personally. Not the least of the latter, was meeting his wife, Jeanne, in 1984.
She had grown up in North Dakota and spent many years in Califomia before coming to Arizona. Jeanne has raised a boy and a girl, mostly as a single parent. Bob also has two children from an earlier marriage and, together, they now have seven grandkids, most of whom live near them.
Professionally, Jeanne worked most of her life in the accounting field. Bob Merrill’s experience in helicopters has been extraordinary. His early gunship experience in Vietnam led to his development work, first in the Cobras, then the Apaches.
He was instrumental in the Army’s development oftheir airborne cavalry units recently personified in the movie We Were Soldiers. It started at Fort Benning, Georgia, with the Eleventh Airborne Assault Group which went to Vietnam in 1965 and became the First Cavalry Division, Airborne. He flew for more than thirty-one years, accumulating over six thousand flight hours in fifty different aircraft, which ranged from single engine helicopters to multi-engine jet aircraft.
The 12 largest plane he ever piloted was a C-141, ‘The one with the droopy wings”, which had been assigned to NASA during his time there. He was the only Army pilot ever to fly that plane. ‘Today’s Army pilots could not have that kind of experience.
Because ofthe advanced technology, today’s flight crews are trained in one helicopter or airplane and they fly that their entire careers. It has become so specialized, the Army feels their pilots need to know the one plane they fly really well. Not that we didn’t — it is just different today.
“When I started out in helicopters, the first craft I flew cost about eighteen thousand dollars, less than the helmets in today’s machines which run around twenty-five thousand dollars. That will tell you a lot about the technology — and also about my age. Bob Merrill, US Army, Retired, is a much decorated veteran.
Though it was not easy to have him talk about them, his awards include the Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, 15 Air Medals, 3 Vietnamese Crosses of Gallantry and the Combat Infantryman ‘s Badge. “Jeanne and I consider ourselves lucky to live here and to have been able to experience the kind of lives we’ve lived. We both play golf, a lot, and Jeanne plays tennis as you know because you often play together.
But when I’m out on that course and the distant sound ofthose rotor blades on an approaching helicopter quickly become louder and louder, I always look up at the sky and marvel as it flies by. “And I imagine myself at the controls, wondering where today’s flight plan will lead me. ” Duty.
Honor. Country. Bob was preceded in death by his parents, Franklin and Luella [Moore] Merrill and his brothers, Don and Bill Merrill.
He is survived by his loving wife of 25 years, Jeanne Merrill; children, Stacey (Brad) Wiemann and Timothy (Rhonda) Merrill; step-children, Kristi (Brett) Hunting and Jeffrey (Stacey) Leonards, as well as nine grandchildren.
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