Individual Details
Robert James "Bob" FURR
(July 5, 1922 - June 27, 1997)
"Furrs, Niemann & Others from 1655-1988 333 years" by Robert J. Furr (1988)
Dad was, at the very least, an interesting person. He was extremely intelligent and well-read until the end of his days. He was also very set in his ways and could, at times, really get on my nerves for his propensity to know it all. But he had a great heart and raised six diverse, independent and relatively balanced children. He and mom fostered independence in all of us and I think that contributed to the diversity within the family.
Dad was employed after college by IBM and was one of four inventors of the IBM Bank System Magnetic Ink Character Recognition system. Inventor of high speed check feed, 2400 per minute intermixed. Senior engineer in charge of development of early electronic computers and peripherals (IBM 360 series). Manager of Manufacturing at the world's largest semiconductor site at its time (1965), IBM, Burlington, Vermont.
He is buried on the side of a hill in Peachham, looking down one of the valleys in Northeastern Vermont that he grew to love so in his later years. No tombstone, but rather marking the site is an ancient fossil rock we found while expanding our house in New York. From the moment we found that rock, he and Mom said that was to be their marker, and so it is.
Dad was always the handyman ( I guess it goes back to the farm) and was always fixing something or other. When he died and was cremated, we didn't know exactly what to bury him in since he didn't want much "traditional". After some thought, I think it was Mike who came up with the idea that he'd be most comfortable in his old toolbox. So in he goes, with some poker chips and a silver dollar for each of the kids birth years, a deck of cards and a hidee, hidee, ho. On the morning of July 2, 1997 we and his friends from Peachham gathered to bid adieu. Amazing Grace on the harmonica and guitar, a round of Jameson's Irish whiskey to toast him on his way, and the sun forever at his back.
After his death, Mom had an idea about a short commemorative book, just for us kids so that we could remember the Man and pass along some of his wisdom to our kids and theirs to follow. The following are a few excerpts from the book, some in Dad's own words, as he had kept a journal over the years.
The book is entitled "Don't Pull the Trigger so Hard"
It gets its title from the following story from when Dad was young and the family still lived on the farm outside Parkston, South Dakota. He and Grandma Furr were returning from town one day when he saw a cock pheasant (there were a lot more of them in those days) down in the ditch along the road. Dada was driving and stopped the car as fast as he could and reached in the back for the ever present shotgun as the bird was sneaking off under a fence and into the field. He knew if it got into the field he'd have all the cover he needed to get away , so Dad ran forward and yelled. This scared the bird so badly it jumped straight up (if you've never hunted pheasant, they can scare the dickens out of you when they take off almost straight up with a beating of wings like you have never heard.) Dad had used an older 16 gauge gun most of his life, but the gun he grabbed was Granddad's 12 gauge and he wasn't quite ready for what happened next. That gun had a tremendous kick and after Dad got set and got the shot off all hell broke loose, the kick, the noise and all else. He said that when his ears quit ringing, all he saw was a cloud of feathers in the air where the bird had been, slowly drifting down to the ground. Seems that in his anticipation, Dad had pulled the shot when the bird was still much too close. The shot didn't have a chance to spread out and ran right up the bird's tail end. This caused what had been a beautiful ringneck cock (and even better potential dinner) to literally explode in the air. As Dad was standing there taking in the full extent of what had happened, Grandma came up and whispered in his era, "Next time don't pull the trigger so hard!!"
there are many other stories about growing up and life on the farm and many of them relate to skunks, as I guess there were a lot of them around.
As he grew in age and wisdom, Dada also became somewhat of a philosopher. As I said he loved to read and his mind was always churning. I wish I had the benefit of the words in the book as I growing up. But then again, when you are growing up you look most often for your own words and those of your parents are most often disregarded until you learn the hard way - This is one particular Bob-ism that I wish I had known and used a lot more --
"We just have to figure out the rules and then play by them the same way God does. Now God has told us what some of the rules are. Others we have to figure out. Some of the rules are real tough - violate them and you're dead. Violate others and you hurt. Violate others and others are hurt or dead. Violate some and nothing apparently happens, except that God knows it. That's where conscience comes in - WE know we screwed up!"
He also had some real pearls of wisdom (unfortunately he kept most of them to himself). He didn't think much of Congress. Witness his words, "The single greatest change in this country in the last fifty years is the change from Presidential to Congressional government. Legislative tyranny is worse than a dictator -- Congress has unlimited time, unlimited vanity and believes it has unlimited comprehension. Thus the need to inquire into everything, settle everything and meddle into everything. The byproduct of Congressional government is massive corruption. The largest criminal class is Congress. They have bankrupted the country in order to be re-elected time after time. Term limits is a necessity. But even more than that we need a strong Presidency again, as soon as possible, to restore the balance between the two branches, an epic political battle. We, the citizens need to help restore this balance. The politicians and the media are not interested."
And this - "Congress has lost the confidence and esteem of the country. They have lost their own self-esteem because deep down in their hearts they know they have been accomplices to doing something terrible and unforgivable to this country. Deep down in their hearts they know they have bankrupted America and given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. They have defrauded America to get themselves re-elected."
From my perspective - we need a strong MORAL Presidency and the people couldn't, for the most part care less. Second, a look at what is happening in the year 2000 Presidential primary season only reinforces the fact that most politicians will pander to anyone in order to get votes - AND THE PEOPLE COULD CARE LESS!
And finally, these -
"All the things you really need to know, you learned in Kindergarten. Robert Fulghum wrote them down, a short list of rules he learned in the sand-pile and then wrote a book about it. To heck with the book, the whole caboodle boils down to a short list - learn it and live by it -
Share everything,
Play fair,
Don't hit people,
Put things back where you found them,
Clean up your own mess,
Don't take things that aren't yours,
Say you're sorry when you hurt someone,
Wash your hands before you eat,
Flush!
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you,
Live a balanced life - learn some, think some and draw, and paint and sing and dance and
work some every day,
Take a nap every afternoon,
When you go out into the world - watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together,
Gold fish and hamsters and the little seed in the Styrofoam cup all die. So do we!
Take any of these and extrapolate it into your adult life and it holds true. What a pleasant world it would be if we all had cookies and milk at three o'clock and laid down with our blankies for a short nap!!"
Finally, these words from Mom about what she saw at the moment Dad left us forever:
" I was sitting there in the family room alone, looking at the sky , bright blue with white coulds passign. Suddenly there was a cloud the stopped dead. It looked ike a white stallion with a tiny figure next to it, wating for someone to come. I saw Bob's spirit rise to that cloud. When he got there, he and the little figure mounted the stallion and he and his first grandson, Bobby Bulldozer went home where they could nap together forever in heavenly peace." I believe she saw it.
Those are just of few of the things that made Dad the person he was - there is so much more!
Dad was, at the very least, an interesting person. He was extremely intelligent and well-read until the end of his days. He was also very set in his ways and could, at times, really get on my nerves for his propensity to know it all. But he had a great heart and raised six diverse, independent and relatively balanced children. He and mom fostered independence in all of us and I think that contributed to the diversity within the family.
Dad was employed after college by IBM and was one of four inventors of the IBM Bank System Magnetic Ink Character Recognition system. Inventor of high speed check feed, 2400 per minute intermixed. Senior engineer in charge of development of early electronic computers and peripherals (IBM 360 series). Manager of Manufacturing at the world's largest semiconductor site at its time (1965), IBM, Burlington, Vermont.
He is buried on the side of a hill in Peachham, looking down one of the valleys in Northeastern Vermont that he grew to love so in his later years. No tombstone, but rather marking the site is an ancient fossil rock we found while expanding our house in New York. From the moment we found that rock, he and Mom said that was to be their marker, and so it is.
Dad was always the handyman ( I guess it goes back to the farm) and was always fixing something or other. When he died and was cremated, we didn't know exactly what to bury him in since he didn't want much "traditional". After some thought, I think it was Mike who came up with the idea that he'd be most comfortable in his old toolbox. So in he goes, with some poker chips and a silver dollar for each of the kids birth years, a deck of cards and a hidee, hidee, ho. On the morning of July 2, 1997 we and his friends from Peachham gathered to bid adieu. Amazing Grace on the harmonica and guitar, a round of Jameson's Irish whiskey to toast him on his way, and the sun forever at his back.
After his death, Mom had an idea about a short commemorative book, just for us kids so that we could remember the Man and pass along some of his wisdom to our kids and theirs to follow. The following are a few excerpts from the book, some in Dad's own words, as he had kept a journal over the years.
The book is entitled "Don't Pull the Trigger so Hard"
It gets its title from the following story from when Dad was young and the family still lived on the farm outside Parkston, South Dakota. He and Grandma Furr were returning from town one day when he saw a cock pheasant (there were a lot more of them in those days) down in the ditch along the road. Dada was driving and stopped the car as fast as he could and reached in the back for the ever present shotgun as the bird was sneaking off under a fence and into the field. He knew if it got into the field he'd have all the cover he needed to get away , so Dad ran forward and yelled. This scared the bird so badly it jumped straight up (if you've never hunted pheasant, they can scare the dickens out of you when they take off almost straight up with a beating of wings like you have never heard.) Dad had used an older 16 gauge gun most of his life, but the gun he grabbed was Granddad's 12 gauge and he wasn't quite ready for what happened next. That gun had a tremendous kick and after Dad got set and got the shot off all hell broke loose, the kick, the noise and all else. He said that when his ears quit ringing, all he saw was a cloud of feathers in the air where the bird had been, slowly drifting down to the ground. Seems that in his anticipation, Dad had pulled the shot when the bird was still much too close. The shot didn't have a chance to spread out and ran right up the bird's tail end. This caused what had been a beautiful ringneck cock (and even better potential dinner) to literally explode in the air. As Dad was standing there taking in the full extent of what had happened, Grandma came up and whispered in his era, "Next time don't pull the trigger so hard!!"
there are many other stories about growing up and life on the farm and many of them relate to skunks, as I guess there were a lot of them around.
As he grew in age and wisdom, Dada also became somewhat of a philosopher. As I said he loved to read and his mind was always churning. I wish I had the benefit of the words in the book as I growing up. But then again, when you are growing up you look most often for your own words and those of your parents are most often disregarded until you learn the hard way - This is one particular Bob-ism that I wish I had known and used a lot more --
"We just have to figure out the rules and then play by them the same way God does. Now God has told us what some of the rules are. Others we have to figure out. Some of the rules are real tough - violate them and you're dead. Violate others and you hurt. Violate others and others are hurt or dead. Violate some and nothing apparently happens, except that God knows it. That's where conscience comes in - WE know we screwed up!"
He also had some real pearls of wisdom (unfortunately he kept most of them to himself). He didn't think much of Congress. Witness his words, "The single greatest change in this country in the last fifty years is the change from Presidential to Congressional government. Legislative tyranny is worse than a dictator -- Congress has unlimited time, unlimited vanity and believes it has unlimited comprehension. Thus the need to inquire into everything, settle everything and meddle into everything. The byproduct of Congressional government is massive corruption. The largest criminal class is Congress. They have bankrupted the country in order to be re-elected time after time. Term limits is a necessity. But even more than that we need a strong Presidency again, as soon as possible, to restore the balance between the two branches, an epic political battle. We, the citizens need to help restore this balance. The politicians and the media are not interested."
And this - "Congress has lost the confidence and esteem of the country. They have lost their own self-esteem because deep down in their hearts they know they have been accomplices to doing something terrible and unforgivable to this country. Deep down in their hearts they know they have bankrupted America and given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. They have defrauded America to get themselves re-elected."
From my perspective - we need a strong MORAL Presidency and the people couldn't, for the most part care less. Second, a look at what is happening in the year 2000 Presidential primary season only reinforces the fact that most politicians will pander to anyone in order to get votes - AND THE PEOPLE COULD CARE LESS!
And finally, these -
"All the things you really need to know, you learned in Kindergarten. Robert Fulghum wrote them down, a short list of rules he learned in the sand-pile and then wrote a book about it. To heck with the book, the whole caboodle boils down to a short list - learn it and live by it -
Share everything,
Play fair,
Don't hit people,
Put things back where you found them,
Clean up your own mess,
Don't take things that aren't yours,
Say you're sorry when you hurt someone,
Wash your hands before you eat,
Flush!
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you,
Live a balanced life - learn some, think some and draw, and paint and sing and dance and
work some every day,
Take a nap every afternoon,
When you go out into the world - watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together,
Gold fish and hamsters and the little seed in the Styrofoam cup all die. So do we!
Take any of these and extrapolate it into your adult life and it holds true. What a pleasant world it would be if we all had cookies and milk at three o'clock and laid down with our blankies for a short nap!!"
Finally, these words from Mom about what she saw at the moment Dad left us forever:
" I was sitting there in the family room alone, looking at the sky , bright blue with white coulds passign. Suddenly there was a cloud the stopped dead. It looked ike a white stallion with a tiny figure next to it, wating for someone to come. I saw Bob's spirit rise to that cloud. When he got there, he and the little figure mounted the stallion and he and his first grandson, Bobby Bulldozer went home where they could nap together forever in heavenly peace." I believe she saw it.
Those are just of few of the things that made Dad the person he was - there is so much more!
Events
| Birth | July 5, 1922 | Parkston, Hutchinson County, SD | |||
| Marriage | April 29, 1944 | New Haven, New Haven County, CT - Edna Maxine NIEMANN | |||
| Death | June 27, 1997 | Hanover, Grafton County, NH | |||
| Burial | Peachman Village Cemetery, Peacham, Caledonia County, VT |  | |||
| Soc Sec No | 504-18-4221 |
Families
| Spouse | Edna Maxine NIEMANN (1923 - 2018) |
| Child | Living |
| Child | Living |
| Child | Living |
| Child | Living |
| Child | Living |
| Child | Living |
| Father | Orville Luther FURR (1892 - 1943) |
| Mother | Clara Ann FERGAN (1894 - 1983) |
| Sibling | Dr. Allan Anthony "Doc" FURR (1925 - 2004) |
Endnotes
1. findagrave.com.