Mr. Richard "Dick" Franklin Spivey

Richard F. “Dick” Spivey, 82, of Fort Worth, Texas, passed away on March 8, 2023 of natural

causes after a short illness by prostate carcinoma, dying peacefully at his family’s Lake Worth

home in the early morning twilight hours. Richard lived a full life and proved his belief that “one

determined person can change the world.”

He was born on December 6, 1940 in Chicopee, and raised in Marietta, Georgia, by parents

S.B. and Alma (Franklin) Spivey, in a house his father built himself. Spivey liked to say later in

life that he became an aeronautical engineer because his parents didn’t have enough money to

pay his way through college, and that he “ended up at Bell because he couldn’t spell,” a lack

of skill attested both by his younger sister Lynn and first wife Jan, and confirmed when just

three spelling errors kept him from studying at NASA Cape Canaveral in the summer of 1958.

Richard was always into the latest tech - whether using an early citizen’s band radio with his

mother during his teenage newspaper route, sharing with fellow Georgia Tech engineering

students broadcasts from a portable TV wired to his car during the Kennedy assassination, or

test-flying the world’s first civilian bamboo hang-glider on his parents’ neighborhood pond in

Austell, Georgia. However, it was his skills of persuasion, first honed as a teen selling root beer

at the Dog ’N Suds, that best served him in his professional life.

His 64-year career in the military-industrial complex began at Bell Helicopter Textron, where on

April 2, 1959. on his first day as a ‘co-op’ aerospace engineering freshman from Georgia Tech,

Rick spied what would dominate the rest of his life: the slowly decaying relic of Bell’s 1953

experimental VTOL XV-3 TiltRotor. He spent decades dreaming and planning its possibilities.

As detailed in Richard Whittle’s biography of the V-22 Osprey, “The Dream Machine,” Spivey

had over 47 years at Bell Helicopter Textron specializing in Aerospace Engineering and

Government Business Development, including writing a patent for HueyCobra’s whisper

wingtip sound dampening, but it was Dick’s drive and passion about “Mach Zero” vertical flight

that fueled and propelled the XV-15, JVX, and MV-22 military TiltRotor programs. His long

career at Bell as a Sales Engineer and Governmental Marketeer included ten thousand

speeches educating Congresspersons, defense agencies, military personnel, and airline

professionals on his far-forward dream of a civilian TiltRotor future.

At one of several retirement galas, former bosses extolled Spivey’s unparalleled skill at

delivering any of five briefings: the two-hour, the one-hour, the twenty-minute, the written, or

the “elevator,” when “you’ve got one floor to tell your whole story.” Spivey had “built his career

by [pointing his arms in the air and] saying—‘takes off like a helicopter’”—the man rotated his

forearms downward so his fingers pointed forward—“‘flies like an airplane.’”

Richard served four years at Ames Research US Army Aeroflightdynamics Directorate, as

Director, offering his guidance and vertical lift knowledge to various Army Research and

Development projects. His last Bell Helicopter consulting projects included support to the

V-280 Valor TiltRotor, which, coincidentally, was announced the morning of his 82nd birthday.

His other written patents, in conjunction with the University of Notre Dame, reduce vehicular

drag and improve gas mileage, with billions of dollars in fuel transportation savings possible.

Rick was married to the beautiful Janis Glanzer from August 1964 to February 1978, initially

meeting at a 1962 picnic with the singles class of United Methodist Church Fort Worth, and

they have two sons, Brett and Eric. Richard married the lovely Terry Duncan in November 1982

meeting at United Methodist Church Hurst, and they lived happily in Fort Worth, Duncanville, and Bedford, Texas, as well as Redwood Shores, California, Breckenridge, Colorado, and

Angel Fire, New Mexico. The families maintain strong relations.

Terry and Richard enjoyed their retirement in the mountains near Angel Fire, riding the

Enchantment Loop on their Can-Am motorcycle with friends from the United Church, visiting

Meow Wolf in Santa Fe with their grandchildren, braving the monster waves safely from the

beach at Mavericks, watching the Dallas Mavericks, wine in Italy, vacationing off the coast of

Iceland, and touring Germany and New Zealand.

Richard “Daido” Spivey is survived by his sister, Lynn Owen of Del Mar, California, her husband

Cole Owen and their sons Damon and Tate; his children, Brett Spivey with his partner Derth

Adams of West Hollywood, California, and Eric Spivey with his daughters, Meghan and Taylor,

and his fiancé Shanah Pack Thornton, of Lake Worth, Texas; his sister-in-law Susan (Duncan)

Rumbelow of Van, Texas with her children, Maggie, Sarah, Price, and Max; his family-friends

Frank and Jan (Glanzer) Mazza of Bedford, Texas; and his goldendoodle puppy Capri of Del

Mar, California.

He was predeceased by his wife Terry Kay “TiKi” (Duncan) Spivey, from a shared Tesla

automobile accident on September 11, 2021; her sons Aric James Mabry and Duncan Ace

Mabry; his father S.B. Spivey and mother Alma Spivey Gillespie, and step-father Hoyt

Gillespie; his brother-in-law David Rumbelow; and Terry and Dick’s goldendoodle, Willow of

Robson Ranch, Denton, Texas.

Services and memorial plans to be announced for the summer in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Private memorials will be held in California, Colorado, Georgia, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.

“It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.” - Richard F. Spivey

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.bluebonnethills.com for the Spivey family.