Year Hgt Wgt Cl Ltr Hometown 1948 * Miami
| Bob Gavigan |
Full Name: Robert Henry Gavigan Jr.
Born: December 8, 1922, Miami, Fla.
Died: April 4, 2023, Moultrie, Ga.
Seminole Relations: Brother of Elaine Gavigan
|
| FSU Career |
| Tennis | |
Year Hgt Wgt Cl Ltr Hometown 1948 * Miami |
|
| Comments |
|
Robert Henry Gavigan Jr Obituary. Posted on findagrave.com. Bob Gavigan was born and raised in Miami, during its 1920s boom years. He sometimes reminisced fondly about growing up when the water in Biscayne Bay was often clear enough to see your feet, and fish were both plentiful and edible!! It had only been about 20 years since the railroad came and transformed what had previously been an isolated fishing village to a small city of almost 30,000 by 1920. All of Dade County only had 43,000 in 1920. By 1930, it would climb to 143,000. Starting in late 1922, Bob's 100-year lifespan covered a period that would encompass numerous eras, periods, and historical events, a few of which touched his life quite directly. Just three months shy of his fourth birthday, the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 provided one set of young Bobby's most vivid childhood memories. He would be able to recall for the rest of his life how some kind of wind-propelled debris had busted a window over his mother's bed (where she lay nine months pregnant with his sister Elaine), ripping open and exposing the interior of the house to the same howling winds and pelting horizontal rain that had already been turning the minutes into hours when it was merely an external terror. He also could remember how (during what he understood years later to have been the eye of the storm) his father had carried his sister Leona and him through knee- and waist-deep waters - relocating them from their structurally-compromised house to a less compromised neighboring house. Afterwards they found that the roof of their own house had blown off and most of the structure collapsed during the second half of the hurricane. Next, around the time of his seventh birthday, young Bobby's parents lost their business and most of their savings after the 1929 financial crisis and subsequent bank failures that led to the Great Depression. And to make matters worse, his father's turning to drinking and gambling as his method of coping with such distressing times created a strain that soon led to separation and divorce. So, to help his mother and sisters, 10 year-old Bobby began delivering Miami Herald newspapers before school and operating a pharmacy soda fountain after school. Finally, and completing what became sort of a trilogy of tragedies, Bob turned 19 the day the United States declared war on Japan after its attack on Pearl Harbor the day before. And by age 23, young Bobby had quickly grown up to become not only a man, but a five-month combat veteran of WWII, as well. Serving in the US Army Air Forces in the Pacific Theater, Bob had many fascinating wartime stories! But his most dangerous experiences occurred in Okinawa near the end of the war. Having arrived via amphibious landing craft on the first morning after the Marines invaded the island, his unit took over a Japanese airfield - recently abandoned - to restore and set up their own air traffic control operations. This was all happening while still under attack by Japanese air and ground resistance forces. From the deck of the airfield's control tower, he and his buddies fired their M1 carbine semi-automatic rifles at Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter aircraft, flown by kamikaze pilots who were strafing US military aircraft along the runway from their low altitude beeline flightpaths aimed at US naval ships offshore. Some of the Zeros came close enough for Bob to see expressions of maniacal glee on the pilots' faces as they raced toward their fiery deaths and the eternal bliss they expected as reward for martyrdom. Bob never knew whether it was one of their own rounds or someone else's that successfully penetrated a fuel tank causing smoke and flames that downed one Zero in the harbor before it could hit its target. Trauma inducing cave and minefield clearing duties lasted several months after the initial invasion, during which period they also trained for the invasion of Japan. On one particular evening Bob was the first of his wartime buddies to notice an eerie-looking hue in the sky over the northern horizon that they supposed must have been a glowing of high atmospheric radioactive particulate caused by the first atomic bomb dropped on Japan that morning over Hiroshima. Not long after the second atomic bomb had been dropped over Nagasaki, Bob was on duty deciphering incoming coded messages at the time that their unit received the following transmission: J...A...P...A...N S...U...R...R... That was as far as Bob Gavigan got. He said he started running and yelling the news so loud - the whole airfield probably could have heard him without the intercom! And much jubilation ensued!! Returning from the service, Bob used financial assistance from the G.I. Bill in 1946 to enroll in the Tallahassee Branch of the University of Florida (TBUF), a short-lived name for the long-venerated Florida State College for Women during its co-ed transition to Florida State University in 1947. His class of 1950 was the last (and perhaps only one) in which diplomas conferred on undergraduates used the TBUF name. At FSU, Bob was a member of the varsity tennis and swim teams, the flying-high circus, as well as the Delta Sigma Pi business fraternity. He kept in contact with a number of coaches and college buddies all their lives. After graduation, an early stint with the Florida Department of Health led him to Bradenton, where he met the true love and soulmate of his life, Mary Louise Davis, during one of her early jobs as visiting teacher for Manatee County Board of Education. After their marriage in 1953, the couple settled in her hometown of Moultrie, where they began their 30-plus year teaching careers at Moultrie High School, commuting during summer breaks to FSU to earn their master's degrees in education. Bob's earliest positions at Moultrie High included mathematics teacher, business skills teacher, and distributive education coordinator. In years to follow, he held subsequent positions as district sales representative for Science Research Associates, principal at Omega Elementary and Junior High School, and principal at Barwick Elementary and Middle School. He had many wonderful students during his years, a few of whom had kept in regular contact with him. Mr. Gavigan was a longtime active member of the
Moultrie Lions Club and Sunset Country Club. The First United Methodist
Church of Moultrie was his church home for over 50 years. During his prime
and well into retirement, he enjoyed swimming, tennis, golf, and fishing,
as well as travel with family and friends, especially to his and Mary
Louise's beach house at St George Island! Personal note: Growing up as he had a Roman Catholic father and Jewish mother, my father never heard the Gospel from his parents, nor anyone else that I know of. They had tried to maintain a neutral (practically agnostic) front concerning their beliefs about God. But I can remember several occasions in my life when he had told me that through his war experience, he could attest to the veracity of the expression, "There are no atheists in foxholes." Perhaps this is why after the war - during his college years at FSU - he joined the First Presbyterian Church near campus in Tallahassee. And why after marrying my mother he dove into worship and service at the same Methodist church in which she had grown up (and - tangentially - where I, to give credit where credit is due, had been blessed to gain an early childhood sense of God's love for me - the appreciation of which I would eventually recognize I had failed to properly nurture as I grew older and more sinful). But it wasn't until Easter Sunday, 2020 after hearing a message by Gary Hamrick at Cornerstone Chapel of Leesburg, VA (via Youtube Live) that my father professed to me that he had prayed for salvation during the invitation segment. And from that day forward, he practically radiated a new spirit and developed a seemingly insatiable appetite for the Word - two characteristics that flow from the kind of new heart God promises to every believer who has recognized and genuinely repented from their own sinfulness. Because his eyesight was so poor by then, Dad insisted I read to him from the Bible every night before his bedtime. And he listened to and soaked up these readings and various online sermons I played for him like a sponge. Before long, he was requesting them both day and night. It was my honor to oblige, and I treasure all memories from this period. My dear father died peacefully in his sleep just before sunrise on that day his spirit was separated from his body at the ripe old age of 100 years and almost four months. Reaching centenarian status had been a wistful goal he had since he turned 98, by which age he was already wheelchair bound. But excepting a few weeks of rehab during his last few years, his long-expressed wish to live at home to the end was realized. He was a great father, and I am so happy for his life, and for the man that he was. And I can hardly wait to see my mother and him again, in the incorruptible resurrected bodies that God has promised to all who have discovered what it means to exist in Jesus! Please don't miss out on true life that comes only in Him! Steve Gavigan |
| FSU Statistics |
| Tennis |
Singles Results
Highest vs 3 Fall/Spring
Year Rank Rank ACC Sets Tournaments 1 2 3 4 5 6 NCAA Total
---- -------- ----- ----- ----- ----------- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
Tot
|