A Salute to Robert (Rob/Bob) Hicks 1934-2025

Bob has been fascinated by airplanes since he was a young lad in England. During WWII, he learned to identify the planes flying overhead. His mother was English and his father, an officer in the Foreign Service, working in Europe for the State Department, was from Tennessee. When his father had to return to the United States, his mother was pregnant with Bob and didn’t want to make the sea journey until after his birth. Bob never got to meet his father because he died from heart problems when he was in his 40s. He remembers traveling around England with his mother, a dancer with the French Loie Fuller Ballet. She had traveled the world with the troupe, including San Francisco, before the Golden Gate Bridge was built Recently, I was told by an EAA member, that Bob was the first person who greeted him at an EAA meeting. Bob was the Membership Director from 2015-2019. He was also the President of 430 in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2012, 2013 and 2014. He passed away on January 3, 2025. This is the bio that was in our June 2019 newsletter. - Skip Brown In 1939, he and his mother moved to Sussex. Because of air raids along the south coast of England, they moved to Somerset in the west of England the following year. He was six years old. Anticipating a German invasion, a small boarding school in Sussex (run by two women) was relocating to America. When a space became available, Bob and two cousins traveled with the other children in the school to America from Glasgow to Halifax aboard the “Empress of Australia.”

The voyage took ten days, and he remembers the ship zig-zagging to avoid submarines. They were among about 30,000 children who immigrated to Canada and the U.S. in 1940. After another boat was torpedoed and sunk, the program was canceled. By then, the Battle of Britain had been won and the invasion threat had ended. The school was sponsored by Eugene Meyer, owner & publisher of the Washington Post. The children were housed in a mansion at Clovercroft Estate in Warrington, Virginia, where they were treated like celebrities. Eleanor Roosevelt invited them to the White House for an Easter party in 1941.

Another memory he has (along with a picture) is meeting the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in 1942. The children spent many hours practicing bowing and curtsying.

When the two women who ran the school returned to England in 1942, Bob (along with five other children) transferred to a school in the Bronx, New York, which he attended for the next three years. In 1945, after the war in Europe ended, he boarded a Royal Navy cruiser, HMS Sheffield, in Boston and headed back to Portsmouth, England. He remembers being given the brass shell casings from anti-aircraft aboard the ship…IF he polished the brass, which he spent many hours doing.

Arriving back in England, he met his soon-to-be stepfather and enrolled in a private school. When his stepfather got a new job in Somerset, Bob attended the Taunton Boarding and Day School through graduation. He was an apprentice in the Bristol Airplane Company until, at age 18, he was drafted into the Corps of Royal Engineers (Army), spending eleven months of the required two years in Germany.

When he left the service, he went to work as a trainee in the sales department of Newman Industries in Bristol, a company that manufactured industrial electrical motors. He was in their two-year training program, which required courses in electrical engineering. Shortly after completing the program, the company sent him to Newark, New Jersey in a Pan Am DC-7, his first ride in an airplane. Early in 1959, he was transferred to Chicago where he had his first ride in a light plane, a 172. He joined a diving club to practice his hobby of scuba diving.

The YMCA, his home at the time, was having an Open House and a troupe of theatre actors was presenting a musical review. Bob was in the audience when one of the performers, Sharyn, came to his seat in her costume, sat on his lap, and sang to him. He was smitten. At the end of the year, he was transferred back to Newark as a district manager, but in 1960, they traveled to her hometown in South Dakota and were married.

In 1961 he went to work for Electric Machinery Company, a Minneapolis manufacturer of large generators and motors, working as a salesman. He and Sharyn moved to Needham, MA, where their son, Christopher, was born. Two years later, the company moved them to Cincinnati, Ohio, where they lived for eight years. Sarah, an adopted daughter, joined the family while they were in Cincinnati. At age 33, Bob got his private pilot’s license and joined a Cincinnati flying club. Their next home was in Bellevue, Washington, where he worked as the NW District Manager for five years.

While living in Washington, he made a memorable six-week business trip to the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran) Spain, and the United Kingdom. While in Egypt, he climbed up inside the Great Pyramid. As it was a day in March, he was the only tourist. The guide went as far as the Queen’s Chamber with him and told him he could climb to the King’s Chamber by himself if he wanted to, which he did.

They lived in El Toro, California for the next 23 years. In 1999 he retired from Electric Machinery Company and he and Sharyn moved to Sequim.

The RV-6, which he began building in California in 1988, was trailered to a rented hangar in Diamond Point. The airframe, instrument panel, canopy, and wings were completed; however, the engine was not mounted and the wings were not on when it arrived in Washington. He spent the next couple of years finishing the project. Whenever he needed help, there was always another pilot/builder willing to lend a hand. After heart surgery early in 2000, he and Trent Sommers became partners because he wasn’t sure if he would be able to get his medical back. Trent helped him finish the plane, and their first flight was on October 16, 2002.

Bob has been active in EAA since living in California, where he served as secretary, membership chair and director in Chapter 92.

His beloved wife, Sharyn, passed away in April 2010.