- Date Of Death: February 29, 2012
- State: Colorado
Bob Wilson: rocket scientist, inventor, motorcyclist and family man
Earl Robert Wilson, 87, of Littleton, departed 29 February 2012. He was born in 1924 in Escondido, California, earning Eagle Scout honors by the time he took to machinery at 15, when he rebuilt his first car.
His mechanical aptitude served the United States Navy as an aircraft machinist in World War Two. While stationed at the airfield near Burns Flat, Oklahoma, he met and married a farmer’s daughter, Margie Jo Martin.
After the war, Mr. Wilson created a classic piece of Americana, constructing his in-laws’ motel and café on Route 66 in Sayre, Oklahoma. Higher education commenced there at the junior college, where he was class president and a baseball athlete, as he had been in high school. He was a Sooner for life, earning his engineering degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1952.
That same year, his career in thermodynamics began at Convair in east Texas, where he helped pioneer the first supersonic wind tunnel tests at the dawn of aerospace. In 1960, he joined the aerospace firm The Martin Company (which became Martin-Marietta) in Jefferson County, Colorado. He settled his family in Littleton, where he resided with his wife for a half-century.
