Robert James Anderson “Big Rob”

Robert James Anderson was born on March 14, 1942, in Kerrville, Texas, the second of four children raised on a small cattle ranch by his parents, Walter and Louise Anderson. He learned early to work with his hands — mending fences before school, and by sixteen he could rebuild a truck engine on his own. That practical, unhurried confidence stayed with him his entire life.

After graduating from Kerrville High School in 1960, Robert enlisted in the United States Army, serving four years and completing a tour that took him far from the hill country he loved. He often said the Army taught him discipline, but Texas taught him patience — a joke that made his grandchildren laugh every single time he told it.

In 1967, at a church social in San Antonio, he met Margaret "Peggy" Whitfield. They married the following spring and spent the next fifty-seven years together, first in San Antonio and later on a small property outside Bandera where Robert kept horses until he was well into his seventies. Robert and Peggy raised three children — Michael, Susan, and David — and later doted on six grandchildren, all of whom called him "Big Rob."

Robert spent thirty-two years as a service manager for a regional trucking company, a job that suited his love of engines and his gift for fixing things other people had given up on. Colleagues remembered him as the first to arrive and the last to leave, always with a thermos of coffee and a story about the road. In retirement, he took up woodworking, built a porch swing for every one of his children, and never missed a Friday night high school football game.

He is remembered by everyone who knew him as steady, generous, and quick with a joke — a man who could fix a carburetor, recite half of Willie Nelson's discography from memory, and make a stranger feel like an old friend within five minutes of meeting him. He will be deeply missed, and forever loved.