Bob Turney
A Man of Faith, A Man of Trust
by Joyce Tepley
Wispy white hair and a welcoming smile is the first thing you notice about Bob. Then he quickly draws you into his primary passion – flying. “You know I restore old airplanes,” he said, partly explaining the trouble we had in setting up this interview. Turning eighty-six last month hasn’t slowed him down at all. Intrigued, I asked him to tell me more. Born and raised in western Pennsylvania, Bob left home in 1942 when he enlisted in the Navy. As a little boy he made model airplanes and dreamed of being a flyer. The Navy and World War II made that dream a reality. By the time he was ready for combat and sent to the Atlantic on a small “Jeep” air craft carrier to fly torpedo bombers whose targets were German U Boats, it was the end of 1944.
“Wasn’t that scary?” I asked. With modesty typical of many World War II combat flyers, he downplayed the danger. “No, it was toward the end of the war and things were winding down in the Atlantic.” After he was discharged from the Navy, a friend from Auburn, Alabama invited him to visit. He hadn’t planned on going to college in the south, but he fell in love with the town and decided to stay and attend Auburn University. It was there he met his sweetheart that would soon become his companion for over fifty years. Virginia worked as a dietician at the university and they dated the year and a half before he graduated with an engineering degree.
“What drew you to her?” I asked. “She was pretty and smarter than me. She had a good personality. We fell in love.” After graduation, Bob got a job as a field engineer with a Tennessee construction company that contracted with the Tennessee Gas authority. He and Virginia married in 1950 and she went with him as he worked the pipelines throughout Tennessee and Kentucky. Soon he was transferred to Texas.
Providence again had a hand in Bob’s life. Chance Vought Aircraft had just moved its headquarters from Connecticut to north Texas. They were looking for aeronautical engineers and Bob applied. For thirty-eight years until he retired in 1989 Bob worked in the field he adored and raised a family to be admired.
He and Virginia had two children, a daughter who is a Senior Vice President of a property management company, and a son who is an architect that designs homes in the prestige’s areas of Dallas. His son also has two grown sons, one of whom is in business in Chicago and the other is studying music in college. It is obvious by the way Bob describes their lives that he is proud of his children’s accomplishments.
Getting back to his first love – airplanes – I asked Bob to tell me more about his involvement in the group of retired volunteers from Chance Vought who work on the restoration of old airplanes. He explained that the company dedicated a large hanger for the men to work in. With painstaking care and detail they have been able to restore quite a number of airplanes that Chance built during its history dating back to 1917. Bob spends two days a week at the hanger in Grand Prairie. In 2002 their restoration group became the Vought Aircraft Heritage Foundation, a self-supporting organization.
“We’re down to thirty volunteers now. I’m the treasurer. I don’t know how I get to be treasurer all the time,” Bob remarked referring to his long stint as treasurer of the Walnut Hill Homeowners Association and Crime Watch. He was also treasurer and assistant scout master of a Boy Scout troop when his children were of that age.
Bob’s voice lit up with excitement as he told me more about the FAU-1 “Corsair” that the group is just finishing. When it was found, it was a wreck in pieces. They restored it from practically nothing. Naively, I asked what kind of plane is a Corsair. “It was one of the leading fighter planes the Navy used in the Pacific during World War II. You remember seeing it in the TV show ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’?” Bob went on to tell me about one of the first planes Chance built in 1919 called a VE 7 “Bluebird”. It was a bi-plane trainer and eventually was fitted with guns to be a fighter. Their group built an exact replica since none exist anymore. It was the first plane to take off from an aircraft carrier. The Navy wants to buy it to place in their museum in Pensacola, Florida.
They are also restoring the first jet that Vought built, an F6U-1 “Pirate”. Museums all over the United States are clamoring for their aerial works of art. The most unusual plane they worked on was a prototype, one-of-its-kind, known as the V173 “Pancake”. It looked like a disc and was built and successfully tested for the Navy in the 1940’s but never used. It sat in storage at the Smithsonian and took ten years for the group to persuade its release for us to restore. Upon completion, the plan is to loan it to Dallas’s Frontiers of Flight Museum, then eventually give it back to the Smithsonian for display.
The work of this dedicated group can be seen on their thousand page website:
www.voughtaircraftheritage.com
Virginia passed away four years ago and his faith in Christ sustained him. Raised Catholic he knew little of the Bible, but Virginia was Presbyterian and encouraged his exploration of God’s Word. He followed through. “One day it hit me. I read the Bible every night. It really changed my life. I feel good because I know where I’m going and someone’s looking out for me. That’s a great feeling. I wish everyone could feel it.”
If you can’t find Bob at the hanger you can find him at St. Monica’s chapel soaring in God’s house, the church he helped grow since he became a member in 1953. He recalls the north side of Royal Lane at Rosser Road having a sign saying, Dallas City Limits, at that time.
“You could even see Audie Murphy’s house in the distance between Forest and Beltline where there was just open fields. I liked the people and the nice homes being built. I knew it was a neighborhood that would stick.”
Bob’s parting words as we wound down the interview were about continuing the legacy of neighborhood involvement and keeping strong his faith in God and his neighbors.
“I’m very fortunate. I have good neighbors who watch out for each other. I think we should continue making an effort to know one another. The Volunteers in Patrol is a worthwhile program and I’m glad to be a part of it for those reasons.”
