of Chimes, AR

May 11, 1933 - April 21, 2014

Robert "Bob" Tusting, age 80 of Chimes, Arkansas passed from this life on Monday, afternoon, April 21, 2014 at his home. He was born in Alameda, California on May 11, 1933 to Goodwin Tusting and Winifred (Mizen) Tusting.
He spent his younger years in California, first in Alameda in the San Francisco Bay area, then living for a while on a ranch in Mendocino situated on the Pacific Ocean. As a boy living in Alameda, he loved to go to his father's machining shop, Liberty Machine, and watch how things were made. In Mendocino, he hunted with his dad, using his grandfather's old Winchester Model 90 pump rifle with which he succeeded at age 12 in shooting quail on the ground at 100 yards, a happy memory for him. On the ranch, he cared for the chickens, but his special job was milking the cow every day, while his brother cared for the goats. To get to town, he and his brother would both ride the one horse they owned, together, with the one on back holding on to the brother in front, and there were times when the brother behind would fall off the back of the horse to the ground below and have the problem of getting back on. It was a big horse, and the boys were small. He was also in charge of keeping the kindling box full next to the wood cook stove his mom used to make meals.

After his dad died, he moved with his brother Oz and his mom from the ranch back to the San Francisco area where he graduated from high school, worked as a carpenter for a time, and then enlisted in the Navy during the Korean War. In the Navy, he was an electronics aviation technician and went flying around the Pacific from the Philippines down to Japan and its islands during the war. While stationed in Japan, he spent his recreational hours touring the countryside and climbed Mount Fujiyama.

He returned to California after his Navy duty and married Ines (Nina) Barrelier, the little sister of one of his best friends. He then went to college at University of California, Berkeley, where he excelled in electrical engineering and physics, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest honor society in the country for liberal arts and sciences. While in college, he also fathered two children, Barbara and John, and supported his family on the GI Bill and work intern programs. After graduation, he obtained a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering and worked in the high energy physics particle accelerator program at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory about 50 miles east of San Francisco, doing innovative research to try to break down atoms to their smallest particle, studying their energy. He was then offered a job at Delco Electronics in Santa Barbara, California, a defense research laboratory under General Motors, where he was in charge of solving a critical problem involving one of our defense systems which he successfully accomplished.

Soon after fixing the defense system, he was divorced from Nina, and took a job as Research Professor in the Division of Ocean Engineering with the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, located on Key Biscayne, Florida. In that position, he worked primarily in underwater acoustic research on Navy research projects, designing and developing underwater instrumentation and devices for scientists and the Navy. He first worked with Professor and Department Head Scott Daubin, and then later worked almost solely with Professor Harry DeFerrari. There he met his second Wife, Deborah Sawyer, who worked in Ocean Engineering also as an administrator.

At the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, Robert was known as an independent, creative thinker and one not afraid to speak out when he thought it necessary. When not working on designing underwater instruments, he would often go diving with his fellow worker and friend, Harry DeFerrari, and together they made many boating trips over to the Bahamian island of Bimini, where they dove to spear fish and catch lobster during the day, and danced the night away at the local English pub known as the Compleat Angler, an old time hang out of Ernest Hemmingway. During these days, Robert became known as ''Bimini Bob'', and as someone who wasn't afraid of diving deep, or being outrageous, funny, or daring, and with his smiling face, twinkling eyes, and charming ways, he was also someone the ladies liked. He had many women waiting to date the tan and handsome Bimini Bob (which stopped when Wife Debbie came along).
His other buddy for fun was Paul Carlson, also a diver but a sailor, too. With Paul, Bimini Bob would sail throughout the islands of the Bahamas, dropping the hook at scenic coves to dive for fish, lobster or conch, and then merry the night away in the cockpit of the sailboat, underneath the stars. After getting with Wife Debbie, Bimini Bob purchased his own sailboat, a 34 foot cutter rig, teak decked sailboat he named the Rainbow Conch, and with Debbie and a little dog named Bojangles, he took off for what turned out to be a two year sailing cruise on the Rainbow Conch, traveling through all the Bahamian Islands, both the well known and the remote lesser known cays and islands, then going on to the Turks and Caicos, where lobster was so plentiful that their dog Bojangles ate lobster for supper, and then with friend Paul Carlson on board, making the four day ocean crossing down to Puerto Rico. During that crossing, everyone was privileged to come across hundreds of whales courting each other off the Silver and Navidad banks, where we had our own sea show of whales jumping into the air, waving their flippers and flapping their tails. The whales would swim alongside our boat, so close you could touch them, and roll on their sides, waving flippers and blowing wet spray through their spouts. In Puerto Rico, Paul left for home, and Bimini Bob and Deb explored the island and made great friends down there who treated them to island food delights.

From Puerto Rico, the Rainbow Conch traveled to the Virgin Islands, where Daughter Barbara and Son John joined their Dad and Deb, and all explored those islands together and swam their coral reef waters. Eventually, Bob and Deb returned to Florida where Deb went to law school in Gainesville, Florida, while Bob got a job as an Ocean Engineer at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution located along the Indian River Lagoon in Fort Pierce, Florida. There Robert designed underwater instruments and devices for scientists all over the nation for use in underwater ocean research and became known as one of the best underwater instrumentation men in the country. He developed many underwater instruments and designs that were patented while at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution (HBOI), and designed instrumentations and underwater devices for NOAA and Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), working with such men as scientist Doug Lee and mathematician Dan Davis, with whom he became comfortable friends.
As an Ocean Engineer, he also developed and designed unique and innovative underwater laser devices to help map objects on the ocean floor and to help focus cameras located on robotic arms on submarines to enable scientists to take more focused underwater photographs of the sea life and other objects being studied. He did design and instrumentation work on the submarines developed at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, often collaborating with innovative designer Chris Tietze, as well as with fellow engineers Greg Kennedy and Larry Taylor. He went to part time work at HBOI after suffering a series of heart attacks and undergoing quintuple bypass surgery around 1998, and then retired, but he remained working from time to time as a freelance ocean engineering consultant, as he kept receiving calls for his talents from the sea technology industry and marine scientists needing his help.

In 2006, after several hurricanes hit the area of Fort Pierce for two years, one after another, Bimini Bob and Wife Debbie moved to Chimes, Arkansas, where they met many wonderful people and friends in the local area. Bob helped Wife Deb with gardening and animal care, kept the home fires going, went back to keeping the kindling box full next to the wood cook stove in their mountain home here, went to community pot lucks and gatherings, to music events from time to time, became a friend and helping hand in the community of Chimes to others, made boot jacks for those who needed help getting their boots off, read books, and quietly enjoyed life with Wife Deb and their dogs and cats in a beautiful hollow of forest, creeks, and meadows. He will be missed so much, and was much loved by his wife. He was a wonderful host at parties we had here in Chimes, and at age 80, danced the night away with wife Deb at her birthday party as the band played its songs.

He had a long and pleasant life, filled with adventures when he could. He loved to travel and explore. He liked watching the History Channel and Discovery Channel, and enjoyed a good movie. He always watched the news channels to know what was going on. He loved his Wife's cooking, and generally relished eating anything he found tasty. He loved ethnic foods from different countries, whether Mexican, Thai, Chinese, Middle Eastern, or Indian. When he was younger, he and Wife Deb would hike mountains, swim and sail in the sea, and travel on vacation to interesting places to see. He would patiently listen (well, most of the time) to his wife's talking away at him. He liked Jimmy Buffet and reggae island music. He could dance the merengue. He made fantastic margaritas, and liked a glass of wine with dinner. He'd celebrate with champagne. He loved his family in California and Washington State from afar, and before he grew ill, would make the trip out to visit them and see California once again, or explore Washington State when visiting his family there. He was a good photographer, and wrote many technical articles which were published in engineering/scientific journals.

He was the rock of his Wife Deb's life, and still is in her heart. He was her Life Partner for 36 years, the poetic wind beneath her wings, and people often commented on their connection with each other and the fun they had together. Even strangers in restaurants would stop at their table to say such things. He didn't like sadness. The only sadness they had together is that they couldn't stop his getting old, his growing feeble, and his heart failing. His favorite place to be was in the home he'd made with Wife Deb with his pets, and that is where he died, in his favorite place. He won't be forgotten, and remains loved. I have a homemade card from him sitting in front of me as I write this, which says ''Happy Valentine to the Love of my Life'' and no matter what else went on or happened, that's how it was with us. It's been overall a ''Lovely Cruise'' with Life with Bob, just like the Jimmy Buffet song. And in their life together, Bob's song for Deb was Chris De Burgh's ''Lady in Red'' (and she had a red dress that was his favorite) and hers for him was Anne Murray's ''You Needed Me'', as he came into her life at just the right time, and the words of that song remain true today for her and him.

I know this is a long story of his life, but I wanted you to know what a fine man my husband was, and still is, and I thank you for your patience in reading this far. And I want to thank all my loving, caring friends and neighbors who've helped me so much to get through Bob's death, as well as Bob's children, Barbara and John, who have treated their ''wicked step-mother'' so well and lovingly all these years and including now. My friends and neighbors who've helped me thus far with Bob's death are so many that I can't name them all here without making this even longer to read. But they know who they are, each one, who's given me kind support. And there's my family and Bob's, including Bob's brother Oz and sister Winnie, and my sisters, who've spoken reassuring words to me too.

Bimini Bob is survived by wife Deborah Sawyer, his former wife Nina, his daughter Barbara Sterritt and her son Nick Sterritt, his son John Tusting with his wife Karen and their children Sarah and Skylar, his brother Allen ''Oz'' Tusting and his wife Marcia, his sister Alwina Therssen and her husband Ron, his cats and dogs, and various other family members and relatives, as well as a large group of loving and caring friends. He is preceded in death by his father Goodwin Tusting and his mother Winifred. We will be celebrating Bob's wonderful life and remembering him fondly at a gathering at Ken and Janet Clark's home in Shady Grove on Saturday, May 17, 2014 at 5:00 pm, the day of his and Deb's anniversary. This will be our Memorial to him. He didn't like sadness, only gladness, and this is how we will remember him, with a celebration of his life. Address of Service: 372 Shady Grove Rd, Leslie, AR 72645......from Hwy 65 south, go to intersection of 65/254 in Dennard, turn on to 254, go 8.5 miles to Shady Grove Rd, turn right, Janet & Ken's driveway is the first driveway on the right between the white vinyl fences.

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