Robert James Lutz

Robert James Lutz died December 8 at age 81.

Services were held at Prineville Community Church on December 17.

He was born June 9, 1924, in St. Louis, Missouri, to George and Esther Lutz. His sister Wanda was two years older. Because of the hard times of the depression which took away the family farm, the four of them went west in an old Ford.

The family survived in California by picking seasonal crops of cotton and fruit. Bob joined the peacetime Army at age 16.

From 1941 to 1945 his military service was spent mostly in the bush in Panama. After volunteering for every duty outside of Panama for three years and being ignored, he finally was sent to Fort Riley Hospital in Kansas, from which he was given a certified medical discharge.

He met Margaret (Peggy) Parent in April 1947 when she was cashiering in a Kansas City, Missouri, drug store. They were married on September 18, 1947.

A year-and-a-half later, at Peggy’s insistence, they moved their few belongings and baby daughter Sherrilyn out to Oregon. As they lived for a short time with Peggy’s folks, it was Peggy’s father who brought Bob to know the Lord as his personal savior. He was baptized in the Oceanlake Baptist Church in 1949.

About eight years as an award winning salesman for a store in Springfield left Bob needing to satisfy his longing for an education. So at age 39 he began as a freshman at Linfield College in McMinnville, graduated in 1965 and continued there to achieve his Master’s in Education degree in 1967. Using his newly acquired education, he became Director of Project Boost at Portland State University, a program which searched out talented but underprivileged high school seniors and channeled them into the Oregon college of their choice. He successfully placed more than 350 students over a two-year period.

Bob next became curriculum director and counselor at the Alaska Skill Center in Seward, preparing Alaskan native young people for work on the pipeline. From there he was lured to New Mexico by the president of Northern New Mexico Community College, to serve as Dean of Instruction for three years and to assist in converting the institution from a community college into a state university.

The Lutzes returned to Oregon, settling in Sisters for the next 18 years. Bob served on the Sisters City Council for two terms and worked as supervisor of maintenance and transportation for the Sisters School District.

As a member of Sisters Baptist Church, Bob served as a Trustee and Sunday School Superintendent.

A second retirement in 1987 put the Lutzes on the road in their RV. They settled in Prineville in 1998.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Humane Society of the Ochocos, 1280 S. Tom McCall Rd. Prineville, OR 97754.