BOB CUTCHINS SELECTED TO HONORARY POST

He walks with a cane for support, and moves about spryly for a fellow in his 90^th year. 

He is thankful for everyday he spends on the good earth and most appreciative that his early days and many years of his adult life he was a “Cradock Boy”. He now calls himself, “The Good ole Cradock Boy” and his wife Ruth, “The Good ole Cradock Girl”.

He says with an alert and knowing twinkle in his eyes, “I love Cradock because I had a wonderful experience growing up. I never felt stress or unhappiness. I had a great childhood. I knew where everyone lived and have only fond memories of the entire community. When I go there now I have a peaceful feeling.”

This is the fellow that the Come Home to Cradock Committee selected as our 2012 Parade Marshall for this year’s October 20th Parade.  His name is Robert A. Cutchins Jr., a 1940 graduate of Cradock High School and an eminent historian of Cradock.  His work is published in Norfolk’s Kern Library, Sargeant Memorial Room and classified by that prestigious library as a significant historical local history collection.  Their nationally known curator, Robert Hitchings, recently praised Bob for his attention to detail and organizational ability. Of course, the collection is a Cradock collection.

Bob was born in 1923, and grew up in Cradock during the Great Depression.  He entered Cradock High School in 1936. In the football season of 1939 as a senior, he was the Manager of the Cradock Admirals football squad, Coached by Bill Story, later to become Granby Coach, win state football championships and be Superintendent of Schools in South Norfolk. 

During high school, Bob like many other “Cradock Boys” had a part time job. He worked and has fond memories of several years as a jack-of–all trades helper in Chapman’s Meat Market in Afton Square, doing whatever Bill Chapman, a man he admires to this day.  

After graduation in 1940, he took the Navy Yard’s apprentice examination and was selected for the Shipfitter’s shop, Shop 11. His dad was a Chief Quarterman supervisor in Shop 11 and Bob decided quickly that he did not want a career as a Shipfitter.

America had entered WWII in the early forties and most Cradock boys his age were volunteering for the draft or signing-on in the service of their choice.  Bob chose the US Navy, tested well after boot camp in Bainbridge, MD, and went to Class "A" Radio School.  In no time, he was promoted to Petty Officer and through the luck of a good assignment draw went to Pear Harbor Hawaii to serve as a watch standing Radioman at headquarters WESTPAC. He remained there until the war ended and was Honorably Discharged, a young veteran in 1946, shortly after the end of the war.

Bob like many veterans from across the USA, now wanted to get on with his life, so he found the perfect woman, a schoolmate from the 1941 Cradock class, Ruth Ortt, and asked her to marry him. He says it was the smartest thing he ever did. They married in 1949 and have been happily married for the past 63 years.

 

Once he found Ruth, he went to work to establish a career for himself, and found a good development job with a Norfolk wholesale hardware company called JB Kendall.  Bob learned that business well because he is very detailed oriented, and keen with numbers, but after several years with them they decided to disestablish the Norfolk operation and Bob found a lifetime, long-term career with Globe Iron Construction Company.

Globe Iron established in 1923 specialized in steel fabrication and provided a range of steel products. It was family owned and Bob fit right in with the folks who ran the place.

The company provided structural and miscellaneous steel for industrial structures, office buildings, schools, hospitals, shopping centers, specialty fabrications and government and military facilities. It was certified for complex and conventional steel structures, and steel bridges and paint endorsements.

The company cut, bent, rolled, drilled, fabricated, blasted, painted and delivered steel products to jobs throughout the Eastern United States and especially here in Hampton Roads. Bob rose through the ranks at Globe to be Salesman, Manager, Buyer, Business Analyst, accountant and retired as the Globe corporate Secretary Treasurer.  He was well respected in the industry and certainly within the company to gain such a trustworthy significant corporate job. He retired from a successful career after 38 years in 1991

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Bob and Ruth moved into their first home after a Valentine’s Day wedding in 1949 and moved into 17 Alden Road. In 1953, he built his new family a home at 208 Kelly Drive, which he sold in 1963 and moved to Ocean View, where he and Ruth reside until this day.

Their one beloved son, Dickie Cutchins, also a Cradock Graduate, class of 1961, died in 2009. Bob talks about Dickie with great sadness. They were very close and he greatly misses that friendship they shared.

Bob said that he had wonderful high school teachers who influenced his life. They were his homeroom and English teacher, Phyllis Ferguson, and his Coach Bill Story who also taught History and English.  He commented that Cradock was always blessed with outstanding teachers.

Talking to Bob about Cradock cannot help but being a learning experience. He introduces us to terms that long ago have gone out of use, like “Prospect Woods” which became James Hurst and Cradock Gardens, or “Bungalow Boy”, which indicated that a fellow lived on Jouet, Warden or Vail Place, or maybe Quackenbush.

At age 57, more than thirty years ago, he converted to Catholicism after years of being a Cradock Methodist.

Absolutely no one in Cradock has more stories on the tip of his tongue about to regal you with when it comes to the Cradock Neighborhood. Bob and Ruth published many of them in a series of letters written about ten years ago and sent to as many Cradock folks as were interested. They are published on the Cradock Alumni & Friends website www.cradock.org in the section called “The Cutchins Epistles”. They are delightful.

Come Home to Cradock 2012 has a very worthy Parade Marshall in Bob Cutchins. All Cradock is proud of him.

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