Human Rights & Holocaust Art

Bob Royce

October 26, 1923 - February 14, 2020

Bob had a long and extraordinary life, including spending years on ships in the U.S. Merchant Marines before, during and after the Second World War. That he survived was itself a miracle as the US Merchant marine had the highest fatality rate of any branch of the US Armed Forces (and it wasn't until decades later that Congress belatedly passed legislation making Merchant Marines veterans).

 
I recall his mentioning that nearly everyone smoked on ship. He never smoked. Decades later he lost a lung, which offers a sound lesson on the dangers of exposure to secondary tobacco smoke.
On ships he was a radio operator, which, equivalent to being an officer, had a great perk of a private sleeping compartment.

He served on ships throughout the north and south Atlantic, around the Caribbean, and in the Pacific, around Alaska, the US west coast and all the way to India. 

Bob was blessed with his first spouse Millie, 2 sons, a granddaughter. An article, in the Bainbridge Island Review, about a book of poems penned by Bob’s late wife Millie, who passed on in 2007.

After Millie passed he was blessed to connect with Beverley West, an acquaintance from the Quaker Center in Winslow, Bainbridge Island. Beverley and Bob eventually lived together and she became his live-in girlfriend (never mind he once told me that “fellows my age don’t have ‘girlfriends,’ ” ho hum, hah!).

A Bainbridge Island Public Library website page about Beverley West’s book Finding My Way Back to 1950’s Paris. An article about it appeared in the Kitsap Daily News.

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Bob and I first met in the early 1990’s at the Magnolia branch of Seattle Public Library where I worked as a part-time circ desk clerk and where Bob worked some shifts while working as a substitute librarian for SPL.

In conversation with both learned we had mutual history to Puerto Rico, where Bob and Millie lived for many years and where they raised their sons Carl and Jonathan. My late old man’s business was in Puerto Rico.

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During the early to mid-2000’s I’d recommended and loaned Bob two books from my home library that years later he would mention as having been among the best reads of his entire life. The two books were The Power of One, by Bryce Courtenay (born Johannesburg, S. Africa, 1933; d. Canberra, Australia, 2012); and The Owl & Other Stories, by John Auerbach (born Warsaw, Poland, 1922;
d. Israel, 2002).

A 2003 article about Auerbach in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

John Auerbach 1922-2002, Facebook page

Bob designed my first website, 1999 to early 2009. During that first year of his working on my website I was visiting as often as once a week.
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During those years Bob also did did other websites, including one for the trailer park community where he lived; and for ¡Sí A La Vida! Si a la vida (Yes to life! ) is a  Winslow/Bainbridge Island based non-profit aiding orphaned children and youth who living on the streets in Nicaragua.
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The Si A La Vida website

The Si a la vida Facebook page

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A few years ago Bob made the donation (solely on paper, it didn’t cost him anything, which was a relief to him as he was on a modest income) of my early 1973 artwork, Vietnam Special No. 1 (see Other Human Rights Art)  to the Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Faner Hall Museum Collection.
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“Tío Bobito,” (uncle Bobito): While you were of a wholly different generation then my post-war boomer generation, you were an outstanding and loyal friend. You did wonderfully with family, friends and more over the course of a long, long life. I’m gonna miss you, hermano y tio! ¡Viva!