Robert Leroy Walsh March 26, 1930 - May 3, 2018 SOUTH BEND - Until his retirement in 1996, Bob had worked diligently all of his life. He started with delivering the South Bend, IN Tribune while in St. Joe Grade School. During his John Adams High School summer years, Bob worked at the “old” Notre Dame University, where there had always been family members working, continuously since 1880 when they immigrated from Ireland. He worked in the dining hall stockroom unloading 100 lb. sacks of flour and sugar, 10 gallon milk containers, and other supplies. He helped paint and stencil the 52,000 wooden seats (twice around) in the original stadium that his Dad helped to build in 1930. During the summer of 1948 he worked in the small Aeronautical Engineering shop, machining wind tunnel orifice plates for Professor F.N.M. Brown. After high school (1948) he carried and delivered mail, before going on active duty with the Naval Reserve, which he had joined during his junior year in high school. While serving in the Navy, he worked with, and flew in blimps at the Airship Experimental Center at N.A.S., Lakehurst, N.J. He was a Korean War-era Veteran. After his Honorable Discharge, he completed Tool & Die courses in South Bend, then worked as a Tool and Die Designer. In 1957 he married Shirley Mitchell, who had just completed her nursing courses at the Holy Cross School of Nursing at St. Joseph's Hospital in South Bend. She was his lifelong gift of love - his “Sweet Lady” - with whom he had seven delightful children. Together, with his wife working as an RN at the hospital, he received his B.S.M.E. degree graduating from Purdue University in 1960. He spent 36 years in Design Engineering, Technical Service, and the Central Research Labs at the 3M Company in Minnesota, and in Manufacturing Engineering at the Hewlett Packard Company in Corvallis, Oregon. He greatly admired “JFK” and in November of 1963, after standing in line all night, he finally entered the Rotunda of the U. S. Capital Building and passed by President Kennedy lying in State. Earlier that year, he and his family had been relocated to the Washington, DC area where the 3M office was located. He worked out of that office, field-testing lab prototype microfilm machines in government agencies. He and Shirley loved traveling to Europe - especially Ireland, and France, where their daughter, Therese, granddaughter, Liala, and son-in-law, Franck, live. Having acquired their individual Irish Citizenships, Bob and Shirley found and spent time with his 3rd cousins there in Ireland, who were living on the original family town's land that his Walsh families had lived on for over 230 years. He continued his passion for family genealogy deep into retirement. Most of all, he and Shirley were always there enjoying each other and their growing families. Bob is survived by his wife, Shirley, their seven children, children's spouses, and grandchildren: Therese (Franck Amsallem and daughter, Laila of Paris, France); Tim (Julie and children, Rian and Brendan of Edmonds, WA); Tom (Alison and son, Ian of Seattle); Aimee (children, Roland and Dashiell of Bellingham, WA); Colleen (children, Treeya and Afton of Stillwater, MN); Patti (children, Lincoln, Logan, and Levi of Bellingham, WA); and Jamie (Rebekah Folsom and children, Milo and Zel of Portland, OR). His remains will be placed in the Walsh Family Plot in the ‘Old section' in Cedar Grove Cemetery, Notre Dame, IN.
05/14/2018 JFC
