368. Frank Wilbur ROBISON Junior
Frank Wilbur Robison, Jr. was born in Shingleton, which was near Viola in Shasta County, California 22 Nov 1930. Wilburs' father was a carpenter and circuit preacher and would often move, help build/start a church, then move again. Wilbur never went by his first name and was generally called F. W. Robison formally and Wilbur colloquially.
Wilburs' father did not much value education, and would not let Wilbur attend high school. When Wilbur was about 18, his father moved but Wilbur refused to move with him unless he was allowed to attend high school. His father relented and let him attend school. Wilbur ran the 220 and 440 and excelled in track and field.
In his youth and while in school he worked in a pharmacy. Back then, pharmacists would mix their own drugs and chemicals and deliver them to customers. Wilbur worked along with a pharmacist and learned much of the trade. He told his grandson David that he used to deliver chunks of cyanide to steel workers and would always warn them to be careful with it. He said they would take it in bare hands and throw it to each other without any semblence of safety. Once, when he told them to be careful, one of them took a piece of the cyanide and licked it as if to prove a point. Wilbur said it was not long before the man was on the ground, and that he barely survived.
Because of his pharmaceutical experience, he was able to skip many of the requisite science and chemistry classes.
Wilbur attended the University of California Berkeley, majoring in civil engineering. Before he graduated he was working as an engineer during a summer. While working on a bridge he and a friend were in the lobby of their hotel looking through some kaleidoscopes when a young woman seemed to show some curiosity. Wilbur met his wife Virginia that day. She was there teaching school.
Since he was already gainfully employed, Wilbur considered keeping his job, but Virginia would not marry him unless he went back and finished his degree, which he did.
Wilbur worked his entire career as a Civil Engineer in California. He helped build bridges all over the state. The highlight of his career, however, and that which gave him the most pride was his work on the Oakland/San Francisco Bay Bridge. Wilbur worked on the project from the very beginning, helping with the triangulations and soundings from boats, and later inspecting the thousands of rivets, leaving the project only when it was time for the asphalt to be laid. The bridge project came in ahead of schedule and under budget. Wilbur was interviewed for the 50 year anniversary of the building of the bridge.
A 32 degree mason of the Ancient and Accepted order of Scottish Rite. A lifelong republican who voted for Bill Clinton due to his disgust with George Herbert Walker Bush, Sr. who, incidentally, was the 6th cousin, one time removed, of Wilbur's wife Virginia.
Wilbur and his wife used to travel the world extensively, taking bi-annual vacations to exotic places, and generally living their summers at the log cabin he had built at Lake Tahoe. After the death of his wife, Wilbur preferred staying at home and his lifelong love of sports was renewed. He would often be found watching baseball or football, college or pro, and enjoying every minute of it.
Wilbur was diabetic for the last 20 or so years of his life and rode his stationary bicycle 3 miles a day until age 90. He died at the age of 92 in a convelescent hospital in Fort Bragg, California near where his son David daughter-in-law Gloria lived.
SSN: 499-05-5417
SSN: 496-44-8778