Robert "Bob" Holman Moffatt, Jr. went to be with his Lord on the 12th of January, 2014. He was born in Houston at St. Joseph's Hospital on the 16th of March, 1923 to Mae Groth Moffatt and Robert H. Moffatt, Sr. His father managed the Cotton Hotel in downtown Houston. The lobby of the Cotton was where many early oil deals were made during the first decades of east Texas oil. Bob, Sr., provided secretarial services for early wildcatters.
His mother, Mae Moffatt, died in 1924 when Bob was a year old. He and his two sisters were raised by his grandmother, Kate Brooks Groth, in her home on Fargo Street. On Sundays, Bob, Sr. sent the children to Sunday School, and then brought them home for lunch and an afternoon ride.
The family spent summers at their home on Clear Lake. At that time only eight or ten houses were built on the lake. From their pier, Bob, his sisters and cousins fished and crabbed for the gumbo his grandmother made each Sunday. He rowed across the lake when he was ten. This is where he cultivated his life-long love for Gulf coast seafood, especially gumbo.
Bob continued to enjoy the outdoors. In high school he and three friends pooled nickels and pennies and bought a few gallons of 19-cent gas to put in a Model A with a rumble seat. With some saltines and sardines they set off to creeks and ponds for fishing and hunting north and south of Houston, also west where the city stopped at the Southern Pacific railroad tracks that are now just inside the Loop. Later on he enjoyed duck and goose and deer hunting.
As a boy, Bob delivered newspapers and the Saturday Evening Post. Bob attended Lanier Junior and Lamar Senior High Schools. He graduated in 1940, worked a year and attended the University of Houston in the fall of 1941. After Pearl Harbor, he registered with the Coast Guard, which was part of the Navy during war time, and was called into service at age19. After boot camp and fire control (gunnery) school in New York and New England, he was sent to San Francisco to become part of a Coast Guard crew on a new 3500-troop transport ship, the USS Gen. Wm. M. Black.
He was fire control man on a 5-inch thirty-eight gun. After one trip in the Pacific to deliver troops to New Caledonia and Guadalcanal, he made twenty-six crossings of the north Atlantic in convoys of which the USS Black was the flag ship. They delivered troops to Europe and returned with wounded troops and prisoners-of-war until the war's end brought all the troops back home. After a trip to India for troops he was in the Mediterranean on V-J Day and watched the lights flicker on around the coast as "lights went on again all over the world." He served another three months on a light house in Buzzard's Bay, Rhode Island. Bob was discharged in March, 1946.
In April of 1946, he began his 52- year career with John L. Wortham & Son Insurance Brokers. His future wife, Nelda Marie Bachle, began working at American General Insurance in August, 1946. Both companies were officed in the same room in the Rusk Building, so it was inevitable that they met. They married November 28, 1947.
In 1965, American General Insurance went public and the two companies separated. Bob stayed at John L. Wortham and became a partner that year. He later became a member of the executive committee until he semi-retired in the mid-1980's. He remained a partner until his full retirement in 1998 when he was 75.
Bob was a hard worker and a no-nonsense man, but he loved to tell jokes and tease people. This helped him become close friends with his clients. Bob loved to treat friends and clients to the gourmet food he enjoyed so much. Rarely did he let others pay the bill. Bob experienced many interesting visits to the facilities of a cross-section of businesses he insured. These included contractors who constructed buildings, highways, bridges and dams in the U.S. and Central America. Other clients included utilities, geophysical companies, pipe lines, the Houston Oilers and food conglomerates. He made trips to evaluate operations at candy factories, pet food processors, juice plants in Guatemala and caviar packing at the docks of New York.
Bob enjoyed poetry and was quite a poet himself, penning many poems for birthdays and special occasions. He was a humble, generous, compassionate man and gave freely to charities and causes that moved him. Often, his contributions were anonymous. He loved his family dearly. He treated others with dignity and respect and expected the same from them.
The constant thread that ran through Bob's life was First Presbyterian Church. His grandmother, Kate Groth, was married there in 1886 in the small brick church built just after the Civil War. During his Sunday School years, he attended the church in its next location on Main at McKinney. In 1932, he saw billows of smoke downtown while he was pitching ball in the street in front of his home. Soon an "Extra, Read All about It" paper was delivered explaining that the fire was in the Victorian Sanctuary of First Presbyterian Church. In 1947, he continued with the church in its current location on South Main and Bissonnet as an usher, then deacon, elder and Clerk of Session. He was also involved for many years with Boy Scout Troop 11 at First Presbyterian Church.
Bob was pre-deceased by his grandmother, Kate Groth; his parents, Mae and Bob Moffatt, Sr.and his sister Mary Jane Rogers. He is survived by his wife of 66 years, Nelda Marie Bachle Moffatt, and his children, Richard Holman Moffatt, Roy Herman Moffatt of Folsom, California, Ann Marie Moffatt Davis, and her husband Ronald S. Davis; grandchildren Laura Marie Davis, Stephen Louis Davis, and Taylor Holman Moffatt and wife, Grayson, and Elizabeth Davis of Olympia, Washington. He is also survived by his sister Robbie Mae Parker of Salt Lake City, Utah and many nieces and nephews.
The Memorial Service will be conducted at eleven o'clock in the morning on Friday, the 17th of January in the Sanctuary of First Presbyterian Church, 5300 Main Street in Houston. Immediately following, all are invited to greet the family during a reception in the Fellowship Hall.
In lieu of customary remembrances, memorials may be made to Nehemiah Center, 5015 Fannin St., Houston, TX 77004; or Main Street Ministries, 5100 Travis St., Houston, TX 77002.
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