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CHAPTER 3: Early Pursuit of the American Dream

In 1952, after graduating from high school, Bob

(no longer “Bobby”) joined the Marine Corps for a

three-year hitch while the Korean War was still in

progress. He went through basic training, learning

to be an aircraft mechanic. But shortly before he

completed basic training, the armistice was signed

and the Korean War was over. Still eager to fight,

Bob joined the boxing team. He won a few fights

but his experiences didn’t encourage him to go

professional.

In October of 1955, Bob was discharged from the

Marine Corps and came home to Seattle. It didn’t

take him long to find a job and he was hired by the

Boeing Company. Bob was assigned to the

hammer shop at Boeing’s Renton plant as a

hammer operator’s assistant. Fortunately for Bob,

his shop foreman was an old boxing fan who

remembered Sammy Santos from his boxing days,

more than 25 years earlier. The foreman took Bob

under his wing and gave him an opportunity for

advancement, once again, benefiting from being

Sammy’s son.

In 1957, he had been promoted at the hammer shop to hammer operator. He had met and fallen in love with Anita Agbalog, a recent graduate of Franklin High School who had been working the summers at one of Bob’s favorite hangouts, the Manila Cafe in Chinatown. She too had found a job at Boeing’s as a graphic designer. It was a whirlwind romance. After less than a year of courtship, Bob proposed marriage to Anita. She agreed and the young couple started married life together in a small apartment at 14th Avenue and Spring Street in the Central Area.

But Bob, still working at the Boeing Company, started having problems at work. He had been involved in an ongoing conflict with a white union steward, a forklift operator, who was jealous of Bob’s close relationship with the shop foreman. The forklift operator deliberately rammed into Bob. In response, Bob went after the union steward, knocking him into a pile of discarded metal. Bob was arrested and charged with assault and battery. When Bob went to trial, others in the shop provided testimony that it was the forklift operator who had provoked the incident. Bob was acquitted but he knew his days at the Boeing Company were numbered.

So Bob decided to invest in a barbecue restaurant with childhood friends Ben and Eddie Laigo, called “The Rib Pit.” They had ambitious plans. With thousands of tourists coming to the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, Bob and the Laigo brothers believed that they could make a lot of money. They decided to sponsor a three-night jazz concert featuring the Dave Brubeck group at the Green Lake Aqua Theater. They brought in local talent such as the Joni Metcalf Trio and Teddy Ross, who years later, won a Tony Award for his role as the Cowardly Lion in “The Wiz” on Broadway. But nobody came. Bob and the Laigo brothers took a big hit financially, closed their restaurant, and declared bankruptcy.

As the decade of the sixties went on and took on a turbulent tone, Bob’s career path was about to take a dramatic turn. He was about to discover his true identity and calling: Uncle Bob--Community Activist.

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Postcard from Seattle World’s Fair 1962. Image courtesy Century 21