Robert "Bob" Adrion Grover

1943 - 2018

Kermit Daniel Grover met Mary Louise Howard while stationed in Georgia during WWII. Born in Savannah on July 22, 1943, Robert Adrion [Ay-drun] Grover moved to the Bangor-Brewer area of Maine between the ages of 6 and 8. He quickly learned how to substitute a Down East accent for his original Georgia Cracker one so his classmates would stop teasing him. Bob truly considered himself a "Mainiac." He loved the woods and the solitude they provided, and he was adept at spotting well-disguised deer and other critters. Among his favorite possessions was the 30-acre piece of the Maine woods he bought after he retired. From the road you can see Mount Katahdin.

When Kermit had finished getting his teaching credentials in industrial arts, he moved the family to Milford, CT because the higher salaries. That was in about 1957, and that was where Bob attended high school, excelling in everything, I'm told, but German, although his grades were satisfactory there.

Accepted to Yale upon graduation like his friend Peter McRobbie, Bob couldn't attend because the tuition fees were too high. Peter and Bob had made a pact, one they fulfilled, to be in Paris before they were 21. Peter went on to Yale. Bob enlisted in the Navy. Once there, and after basic training, he applied for and received a nomination to the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. Unfortunately, the academy wasn't his cup of tea, so he chose to resign after his plebe year. The Navy reassigned him to the Keflavik air base in Iceland for the rest of his active duty.

It all worked out, though. His friend Peter was spending the 1963-64 year in Paris studying with a junior year abroad program. Bob took leave during April of 1964 and the two of them did indeed meet in Paris by the time they were 21. That was also the time Bob met his wife-to-be (the then Alice Carol Fork, aka Rolly) who was also studying in Paris that year. Bob and Rolly corresponded by mail until each had returned to the US. They married within a year and began a family.

Most of his early working life he spent doing inspection. First for Norden, the bombsite folks, and later, in the clean room, for Perkin-Elmer while they were working on the Hubble Space Telescope.

After daughter Pamela had finished her undergraduate degree, Bob returned to college, earned his bachelor's degree and went on to get his master's in English, specializing in medieval English literature with a special love for the works of Chaucer and Marie de France.
Bob really was a Renaissance man as his marker says. He loved learning, trying new things, reading, and collecting all manner of things. Among his interests and affiliations were boy scouting, fly fishing, radio-controlled airplanes, bicycling, hiking, reading (his library was extensive and wide-ranging), music (especially folk and classical), leather working, clockworks, and target shooting. And there were the pets: several cats over the years, araucana chickens, a malamute, an English setter, a pet skunk, Bob's bees, and for a while even an extensive family of wild racoons. He wanted to get involved in falconry, but CT law limited him to reading about it.

In 2016, he and Rolly moved to Grand Blanc, MI, nearer to advanced health care than his Maine property but also nearer to the Michigan woods in Au Gres where the family has its "summer roots." It had become clear he was suffering from a type of dementia that eventually robbed him of speech. He passed away on October 15, 2018 in Grand Blanc, Michigan.