Robert "Bobby" Henry Tetley

Bobby graduated from Highland Park High School in 1943. He lettered in tennis and was a member of the Highland Park basketball team that reached third place in the 1943 Texas state playoffs. He also was the catcher for pitcher Bobby Layne on the Highland Park baseball team that won the 1943 Texas state championship.

Graduating in 1943 during World War II, he enlisted in the infantry and was a member of the famed 42nd Rainbow Division in Europe. He was one of the few survivors of his Company that was involved near the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. He was found injured, lying in the snow, resulting in several months of hospitalization.

After World War II, he alternated between four jobs, at the University of Texas, graduating in 1949 with a Business Administration degree, majoring in Marketing. He was a member of the University of Texas Cowboys and also elected president of his fraternity, Beta Theta Pi. In 1950 he joined Dorothy Gray Cosmetic Company and later elected President of the Cosmesis Club of Texas. In 1968, he was hired by Estee Lauder, where his always upbeat manner, extraordinary memory and uncanny mathematical mind propelled him to become national Vice-President of Sales at Estee Lauder’s New York City headquarters, and third in line to President Leonard Lauder. He retired officially in 1990. From Dallas, he devoted the next ten years developing Estee Lauder’s international expansion with repeated travels to Europe, Asia and South America. Kind and generous, Bob Tetley and his contagious sense of humor and gregarious personality will be sorely missed by all, including the family of Ann and Tom Faulkner; Tom and Bob being close friends since 1944 when Bob’s mother married Tom’s uncle.

Bobby was preceded in death by his father, Robert Houck Tetley, who was killed in an automobile accident in 1940; his mother, Tora Hockenberger Tetley Faulkner; his sister, Suzanne Tetley Dougherty; and his step-sister, Ruth Faulkner Howe. He is survived by his sister, Barbara Faulkner Frolik and her husband, Tom, of Atlanta, Georgia, and her daughter, Clea Suzanne Fields Schiffmacher; his four nephews, Robert Dougherty Jr., Thomas Dougherty and Kenneth Dougherty, all of Tyler, Texas, and Kirkman Dougherty of Ft. Smith, Arkansas, children of his sister, Suzy; and by the three children of his step-sister, Ruthie, Laurie Flanders, Tom Howe and Margaret “Maggie” Bauer, as well as all of their children and grand-children.

Bob Tetley was a member of the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation where memorial services will be held at 3:00 o’clock p.m. on Tuesday, May 10, 2022. He will be interred at Hillcrest Memorial Park.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests memorials, if desired, be made to the Church of the Incarnation, 3966 McKinney Ave., Dallas, Texas, 75204, or a charity of choice.