He was born in Holyoke, MA on 17 October 1922 to Royal W. Randall and Lillian Winter Randall. He grew up and was schooled in Mobile, AL, where he graduated from Murphy High School in 1939.
He went to Rice Institute in Houston where he graduated with a BA degree in in Physics in 1944. He had been in the NROTC at Rice, so he was commissioned as an Ensign in the Navy upon graduation. He served two years as a Navigator on the USS Conner, a destroyer in the western Pacific (the youngest navigator in the Pacific fleet).
He returned to Rice on discharge from the Navy. He earned his MA in Physics in 1949. He married Marguerite (Margot) McClellan Andrews that year. He continued at Rice and earned his PhD in Mathematics in 1954. He taught mathematics at Purdue University for two years. In 1956, he joined the Operations Evaluation Group in Washington, DC assigned to the Pentagon and worked on a contract held by MIT with the Navy Dept. He was transferred to Key West, FL and worked under the same contract there for a year with a Naval Aviation squadron. He then returned to work at the Pentagon for two years.
He was transferred in 1961 to Japan and assigned to work with the 7th Fleet. They lived in Japan for 18 months. On return to Washington, he worked with a Marine Evaluation Group for two years, followed by two years with a Weapons System Evaluation Group. He then started work with Tetratech (now Honeywell) and worked on defense contracts in DC and San Diego. He retired in 1988, moved back to Houston, and married Patricia Stevens Thompson in 1989.
During his long retirement, Royal enjoyed extensive European travel. One of his many hobbies was reading whodunits -- he liked to build some of his travel destinations around settings in his favorite books. He fulfilled his lifelong dream to visit Machu Picchu, Peru. He traveled for three weeks to the site and other areas of interest in Peru. He was avidly interested in steam locomotives and pursued study and visits to locations where they were being preserved. He also loved Porsche automobiles. Throughout his life, he owned several of them. He had a complete set of metric tools and maintained all his own vehicles until very recently. He imported his current Porsche direct from the factory in Stuttgart and it was regularly in antique auto shows in the Houston area where he displayed the original Bill of Sale.
His ashes will be interred at the family plot in Mobile, AL.
SHARE OBITUARY
v.1.9.5