Bobby R. Coffelt

Bobby R. Coffelt Bob (his family called him Bud) was born in Southern California and moved to Sacramento when he started kindergarten. They lived on Capitol Avenue only two blocks from Capitol Park where he and his sister Fern and friends often played. He made lifelong friends and had endless stories of their escapades. They roamed the neighborhood, built forts with material they found in the alleys, made root beer in the basement, built push carts which they raced down the sidewalks on Capitol Avenue, broke his arm jumping from his bedroom window to a tree, walked the railroad tracks and explored the rivers. When Bob was 12 his mother’s washing machine broke and since his Dad was not a handyman he asked if he could try to fix it and did. From then on, he did the repairs around the house and even worked on the family cars. He did a valve job on his Dad’s ’38 Chevy when he was 15 and still has most of the tools his Dad bought him to use. He just seemed to understand how things worked. While he was in high school a neighbor offered to set him up in his own auto repair shop. Instead, after graduation he and his best friend Doy got jobs at McClellan AFB. To avoid being drafted into the Korean war he enlisted in the Air Force and became a jet mechanic. He was stationed at March Air Force Base in Riverside where he worked on the flight line on B-52 bombers. There he met and married Shirley; after his discharge they moved to Sacramento and he went back to McClellan working on the flight line on fighter jets. He later went to Aerojet in the glory days of the space program as a rocket test technician on a crew setting up rockets for test firing. After Aerojet cutbacks he eventually started his own company selling architectural products focusing primarily on installing and repairing flagpoles which included repairing the flagpole on the State Capitol. He retired in 1996 after having heart surgery.