Robert Lee Blake was born October 31, 1923, in Ronceverte, Greenbrier Co., WV, and died March 7, 1978, in San Jose, Santa Clara Co., CA, at age 54. Buried in San Francisco Bay, CA. Grave marker only in Riverview Cemetery, Ronceverte, Greenbrier Co., WV. He is the son of William Bradbury Blake of Dayton, Rockingham Co., VA, and Lena Lee Edwards of Belton, Bell Co., TX.

Eva Merle "Judy" Judy was born August 15, 1925, in Cornstalk, Williamsburg District, Greenbrier Co., WV, and died July 16, 2013, in North Las Vegas, Clark Co., NV, at age 87. Buried in Andrew Chapel Cemetery, Williamsburg, Greenbrier Co., WV. She is the daughter of Samuel R. Judy of Cornstalk, Williamsburg District, Greenbrier Co., WV, and Ruby Grace Suttle of Williamsburg, Greenbrier Co., WV.

Robert Lee Blake and Eva Merle "Judy" Judy were married December 9, 1949, in the Church of the Incarnation, Ronceverte, Greenbrier Co., WV.

Robert Lee Blake and Eva Merle "Judy" (Judy) Blake had three children:

1. Robert Burdine "Bob" Blake: Born Unknown.
2. Barbara Anne Blake: Born Unknown in Pensacola, FL. Married to Unknown Galloway: Born Unknown.
3. Brian Edward Blake: Born Unknown in Bremerton, WA. Married August 29, 1981, in Spring Valley Baptist Church, Dallas, TX, to Babbi Joyce Conn: Born Unknown. Her parents are Mr. and Mrs. Johnny R. Toland of Seagoville.

Robert Lee Blake and Eva Merle "Judy" (Judy) Blake were divorced November, 1966, in Santa Clara Co., CA.

Eva Merle "Judy" (Judy) Blake then married Julius Glick.

Julius Glick was born March 10, 1920, in Chicago, Cook Co., IL, and died January 4, 2009, in San Jose, Santa Clara Co., CA, at age 88. He is the son of Charles Glick of Lithuania, and Jennie Goldstein of Illinois.

Julius Glick was first married to Clydine Kemp.

Clydine Kemp was born December 21, 1921, in East Prairie, Mississippi Co., MO, and died April 9, 1978, in San Jose, Santa Clara Co., CA, at age 56. She is the daughter of John Shelby Kemp of Shady Grove, Crittenden Co., KY, and Lillian Thrasher of Mississippi Co., MO.

Julius Glick and Clydine Kemp were married 1947 -  1955 in Unknown.

Julius Glick and Clydine (Kemp) Glick had two children:

1. Melissa A. Glick: Born October 25, 1954, in Unknown. Married June 10, 1978, in Riverside Co., CA, to Gerald F. Denny: Born March 24, 1947, in Unknown.
2. David L. Glick: Born about 1956 in Unknown. Married to Beatriz G. Unknown.

Julius Glick and Eva Merle "Judy" (Judy) Blake were married August 30, 1979, in Santa Clara Co., CA.

Julius Glick and Eva Merle "Judy" (Judy) (Blake) Glick had no children.

TIMELINE

Posted 6th March 2012 by beblake

My Father - LCDR Robert L. Blake

My father died on March 7, 1978. He was 54 years old, plus a few months, exactly as I am today. I say this without worry, as he died of lung cancer from a life of smoking three packs a day. I think this 34th observance of his death is unique for me because of our age similarities. From this day forward, I am truly on my own, without a way of measuring myself against my father, as all sons must surely do.

Robert Lee Blake was born on October 31, 1923; Halloween, a fact that always amused me. My sister was born on April 1st, and I always thought it was funny that our family of five people had two such “special” birthdays.

He was born in the little town of Ronceverte, West Virginia, in Greenbrier County. His father was William B. Blake, Jr., the editor of the weekly paper, the West Virginia News. His mother was the former Lena Lee Edwards, from Texas (youngest daughter of Joseph F. and Carrie Lee Edwards). He was the youngest, by several years, of four children.

The photo below shows my father as a young boy, c.1927, standing on the front steps of the only home he ever knew growing up, 818 Edgar Ave. in Ronceverte. Following that is a picture of his Boy Scout troop, c.1933. He is 2nd from the right, skinny, and straight as an arrow.

The portrait below shows my father with facial characteristics that are fully familiar to me. I would estimate the likeness from c.1937, at age 14. The hair, the nose, eyebrows, and general countenance are unchanged for the remainder of his life. I recognize him.

Again on the steps of his home, this time with his two older brothers, c.1939. From the left, his oldest brother is William E. Blake (born in 1910). Standing in the middle is his other brother, Norman B. Blake (born in 1914). His sister, Marjorie Blake Lee (born in 1915), was not in this picture. Note the cigarettes in his brothers’ hands. Smoking was a family habit, among others. The youngest brother was the first sibling to die. As did my father, they all smoked up to the day they each passed away.

The last photo-pair here, in this first phase of my father’s life, shows a young cadet just emerging into the prime of his life. He attended Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI) in 1941-42, studying Forestry. When the war began, he heard the call that so many of that generation followed, and enlisted in the US Navy in December 1942.

My father was an intelligent man, gifted mechanically, and well-versed in the skill of writing, as befitting his family’s long history in the newspaper business. It wasn’t too long before the Navy put him into their flying program, and at 20 years of age, he was commissioned an Ensign, with wings – a Naval Aviator, as I often heard him correct people who erroneously referred to him as a “pilot.” The photos below are two of my favorites of my father. They were taken in 1943, while he was still an officer-cadet.

The last picture before going off to fight was taken after March 1944, based on the Ensign shoulder boards on his white uniform jacket. This was taken in Ronceverte, on the grounds of his family-home. In a letter written to his brother, Bill Blake, already somewhere in the South Pacific, his father expressed the mixed emotions of pride and fear seeing his youngest son in his bright white uniform. I’m sure the picture below is from the visit home that his father referred to. He was 21 years old, going into combat.

In the years that I can remember talking to my father, as a young boy, a teenager, and a young man, I cannot recall him ever talking about his experiences during the war. My mother would sometimes tell us stories, but he never talked about it. The things posted here came into my possession only in the recent past, as we sorted through material that has been stored in my mother’s house for dozens of years. Among these items were my father’s military records, and a lot of photographs. The best are presented here.

After finishing flight training, my father, Ens. Robert L. Blake, was assigned to flying duty aboard the U.S.S. Sargent Bay, an “Escort Carrier,” referred to by my father in a letter to his father, as a “Baby Flattop.” These were small aircraft carriers, barely big enough for an aircraft to takeoff. With the planes stored on deck, wings folded, lashed down for rough seas, these ships provided a much-needed boost to mobile air power in the South Pacific. They augmented the larger and more famous aircraft carriers.

My father was assigned to VCE-83, flying a Torpedo Bomber known as an Avenger. Below is a photo taken by the Navy for public release to his hometown paper, showing him in the cockpit. On the back of the photo was an authorized press-release, ready for printing, which is also posted here. I do not think his father printed either the photo or the press-release, as he was concerned that his subscribers would think he was paying unfair attention to one of his own sons.

The photo below shows the “aviators” of VCE-83 in late 1944 or early 1945. My father is sitting 4th from the right. An example of the Avenger in flight, although probably not my father’s aircraft, is also posted below.

From the records, it would appear that activity onboard the “Sarge” was fairly routine during the first couple of months, mostly consisting of anti-submarine patrols. But that changed beginning in February 1945. With the war in Europe in its concluding stages, the focus in Asia became the need to attack the Japanese homeland. To reach Japan, it was necessary to begin capturing some of the larger islands in the region, from which a concerted aerial bombardment plan could be executed. Two of those islands were Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

Prior to the Marines landing on Iwo Jima (eventually raising a flag on Mt. Suribachi), the Navy began heavy attacks on Japanese positions. These attacks came from ship guns, as well as aerial bombardment from carrier-based aircraft. My father and other crews flew a number of such combat missions before and during the invasion of Iwo Jima, between February and March 1945.

Following Iwo Jima, the Navy turned its sights on the Ryukyu Island chain, primarily the main island of Okinawa. In action similar to Iwo Jima, VCE-83 participated in the large-scale aerial bombardment of Japanese positions prior to, and during the invasion of these islands. For both major combat efforts, my father was awarded four Air Medals and one Distinguished Flying Cross, an award equal to the Silver Star (given for ground-combat heroism). The citations for the DFC and his 4th Air Medal are posted below.

After the war, my father returned to his interrupted civilian life in West Virginia. How could that have ever worked? A young man leaves the rolling hills of Greenbrier Co., and experiences the world, facing the terrors of combat, and returns home. Everything must have seemed different. It couldn’t last. He tried to follow in his father’s footsteps as an editor and publisher of a small-town newspaper (Grundy, WV), but it didn’t work. He met and married my mother, the former Eva Merle Judy, in 1949 (photo below), but by 1950, Korea was flaring up, and the Navy called him back to active duty.

Over the next 18 years, my father flew different aircraft, and went to sea for months at a time as a Landing Safety Officer (LSO) on various aircraft carriers. Before I was born, he was stationed in Rhode Island, Pensacola, Alameda, and Bremerton…where I arrived. We then spent tours in Hawaii, back to Alameda, San Jose, and finally back to Rhode Island, where he retired from the Navy in 1968.

Below are photos of Lt. Blake setting a record for guiding safe carrier-training landings in Pensacola (1956), the happy Navy family in Hawaii (1958), preparations for a fishing trip in Alameda (c.1961), and an EC-121 “Connie” that my father flew in the early 60’s.

In 1967, we were stationed in Wickford, Rhode Island. My father was flying C-130s by then, with some deployments to Viet Nam. He was assigned to Operation Deep Freeze, a Navy program supporting various activities in Antarctica. He spent six months flying in and out of the area with ski-mounted C-130s, using jet-assisted take-off (JATO) boosters to generate enough power during the take-off roll to get airborne. This is one area of his military career that he loved to talk about in the years that followed. Posted below are two photos showing my father standing at the South Pole, and another of his aircraft.

After his tour in Antarctica, my father returned to flying routine C-130 missions in the US. One night in 1968, he was flying off the east coast through rough weather, when a series of bad luck occurred. He lost two of his four engines, with concern that another one could go at any moment. He brought the aircraft back to base, landing safely, but he never stepped into a cockpit again. It had been 26 years since he entered the Navy, and he knew it was time to retire. In my life, we had always been a Navy family. At age 11, I had no idea what pressures my father faced; the uncertainty of life after the Navy, and providing for a family of five. The photos below show the emotion of the day--one last ID card photo, and the forced smiles of my parents at the retirement ceremony.

With great and raging debate in the house, a decision was made to return to San Jose, California following my father’s retirement. We had a house there, and we knew the folks in the neighborhood. Beyond that, neither parent had a job. My father was not a salesman. His old retired friends tried to get him started in real estate, but he was not able to do that kind of work. He worked for time at repairing appliances, a mechanical skill he possessed naturally. But he had a hard time billing his customers. That line of work didn’t last too long, either.

The photo below shows my father at the beach in California, sometime around 1972. Thin as always, he is holding a can of Hamms beer, his favorite. He and I used to go fishing at various lakes in California in the early 70s, when I was still a teenager. He would tell folks that we were going to drink beer. He’d say “Root for him” (pointing towards me) “and Hamms for me.” Not so clear in the photo is the ever-present pack of cigarettes in his shirt-pocket. The latter killed him, but the combination of both items, and the depression of post-Navy life, is ultimately what took his life.

My father was cremated; his ashes were emptied at altitude by a Navy aircraft flying over the Pacific Ocean. My mother had a small tribute to him placed in a park in San Jose, and his family had a marker placed among the Blake family in Riverview Cemetery, in Ronceverte, WV. The photo below shows the marker. The last posting is an obituary published in his old family newspaper, now the West Virginia Daily News.

I visited my younger daughter this past weekend, and we talked briefly about this subject. She was born in 1985, and she commented that she hadn’t realized how close my father’s death was to her birth. It doesn’t seem that way to me. My father died while I was away overseas, during my short time in the military. When I came home, and left the service, I moved to Texas. That was 1980. I married soon thereafter, and we had two daughters in the early 1980s. My father never knew my wife, or our daughters; and now our grand-daughters. I wish they had known him.

RIP

The 1920 U. S. Census taken on January 5, 1920 shows William B. J. Blak, (age 40) born in West Virginia to Missouri and West Virginia-born parents is a Newspaper Editor owning his home valued free of a mortgage and living on Pocahontas Avenue, Fort Spring District, City of Ronceverte, Greenbrier Co., WV. Living with him is his wife, Lena Blak (age 35) born in Virginia to Virginia-born parents. Also living there are his three unmarried children, all born in West Virginia to West Virginia and Virginia-born parents: William B. Blak, Jr. (age 9); Norman Blak (age 5); and Marjerie Blake (age 4).

Robert Lee Blake was born October 31, 1923, in Ronceverte, Greenbrier Co., WV.

Eva Merle "Judy" Judy was born August 15, 1925, in Cornstalk, Williamsburg District, Greenbrier Co., WV.

The 1930 U. S. Census taken on April 7, 1930 shows William B. Blake (age 46) born in Virginia to Ohio and Virginia-born parents and first married at age 25 is a Newspaper Editor owning his home valued at $15,000 and living on Railroad Avenue, 3rd and 4th Wards, City of Ronceverte, Greenbrier Co., WV. Living with him is his wife, Lena E. Blake (age 43) born in Texas to Texas-born parents, and first married at age 22. Also living there are his four unmarried children, all born in West Virginia to West Virginia and Texas-born parents: William E. Blake (age 19) absent; Norman Blake (age 15); Marjorie Blake (age 14); and Robert Blake (age 6).

The 1930 U. S. Census taken on April 23, 1930 shows Samuel R. Judy (age 30) born in West Virginia to West Virginia-born parents and first married at age 24 is a Farmer of his Own Farm living in Williamsburg District, Greenbrier Co., WV. Living with him is his wife Ruby G. Judy (age 22) born in West Virginia to West Virginia-born parents and first married at age 18. Also living there are his daughter and son, both born in West Virginia to West Virginia-born parents: Eva M. Judy (age 4-7/12); and Sidney W. Judy (age 2-11/12). A Farmer family of Lockad W. Judy (age 51) lives nearby. This family may be the parents of Samuel.

The 1930 U. S. Census taken on February 9, 1930 shows Charles Glick (age 42) born in Lithuania to Lithuania-born parents and having emigrated in 1903 and a Naturalized citizen and first married at age 25 is a Hardware Store Proprietor renting his home for $75/month and is living at 3017 South State Street, 2nd Ward, City of Chicago, Cook Co., IL. Living with him is his wife, Jennie Glick (age 35) born in Illinois to Odessa, Prussia-born parents, and first married at age 19. Also living there are his four unmarried children, all born in Illinois to Lithuania  and Illinois-born parents: Gertrude Glick (age 14); Leonard Glick (age 13); Julius Glick (age 10); and Seymore Glick (age 8).

Clydine Kemp received her Nursing Corps Membership Card on September 15, 1944.

Robert Lee Blake and Eva Merle "Judy" Judy were married December 9, 1949, in the Church of the Incarnation, Ronceverte, Greenbrier Co., WV.

In 1956, Julius Glick, MD, and his wife Clydene, were living in Clinton, IA.

In July, 1961, Julius Glick, MD, was living in Amarillo, TX.

In 1966, Julius Glick, MD, was in San Antonio, Bexar Co., TX.

Robert Lee Blake and Eva Merle "Judy" (Judy) Blake were divorced November, 1966, in Santa Clara Co., CA.

By 1972, Julius Glick, MD, was living in San Jose, Santa Clara Co., CA. No Clydene is listed.

Clydene Glick died April 9, 1978, in San Jose, Santa Clara Co., CA, at age 49.

Robert Lee Blake died March 7, 1978, in San Jose, Santa Clara Co., CA, at age 54. Buried in San Francisco Bay, CA. Grave marker only in Riverview Cemetery, Ronceverte, Greenbrier Co., WV.

Julius Glick and Eva Merle "Judy" (Judy) Blake were married August 30, 1979, in Santa Clara Co., CA.

Julius Glick died January 4, 2009, in San Jose, Santa Clara Co., CA, at age 88.

Ernest Richard Suttle, 77, of Nallen, Nicholas Co., WV, is the brother of Ruby Gulledge of Youngstown.

Born September 10, 1900, in Greenbrier Co., WV. He is the son of Henry and Susan Suttle.

http://tenn-to-texas.blogspot.com/2012/03/my-father-lcdr-robert-l-blake.html

Nadine Kemp died Wednesday, December 18, 2002, at Christian Health Care East Nursing Facility, Springfield, MO, at age 81. Buried in Memorial Park Cemetery, East Prairie, Mississippi Co., MO.

Eva Merle "Judy" (Judy) (Blake) Glick died July 16, 2013, in North Las Vegas, Clark Co., NV, at age 87. Buried in Andrew Chapel Cemetery, Williamsburg, Greenbrier Co., WV.