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YEAGER, Robert Benjamin 1923-2008

YEAGER

Posted By: County Coordinator
Date: 12/22/2008 at 19:13:05

Service:
2:00 PM - Friday, December 26, 2008
Trinity United Methodist Church
601 Milwaukee St.
Charles City, IA 50616

Dr. Robert B. ”Bob” Yeager, 85, of Charles City, Floyd county, Iowa, died on Friday, December 19, 2008, at the Ninth Street Chautauqua Guest Home in Charles City.

Robert Benjamin Yeager was born June 7, 1923, in Trinidad, Colo., the third child of Wilbur and Marie Yeager. He spent his early years on a ranch near Thatcher, Colorado, which was being homesteaded by his parents. At the age of five, the family moved to Sioux City, where Bob spent his formative years hunting arrowheads in the hills, and working at various jobs, including as a stock boy in a grocery store, a lifeguard at the Goodwill Mission camp, where he was credited with saving the life of a child, and later at the Swift meat processing plant, where he worked on the kill floor. Bob attended Morningside College in Sioux City, and then transferred to the University of Iowa to study dentistry.

It was there he met his future wife Bernadine while singing in the choir at the First Presbyterian Church in Iowa City. World War II interrupted his personal plans and his studies, however, and Bob served in the medical corps of the U.S. 8th Army. Bob served primarily in France, and was assigned to a hospital train which derailed in the midst of the Battle of the Bulge during the winter of 1944-45. While in the Army, Bob, who was by then 6’8” tall, began to play basketball with some success. When he returned to the University of Iowa after being mustered out of the service, Bernie was waiting for him, and so were the Iowa Hawkeyes. He played one season under Coach Pops Harrison and alongside Murray Wier, but left the team to focus on finishing dental school.

He and Bernie were married shortly after she graduated from nursing school in 1947. Bob graduated from dental school in 1949, and they moved to Charles City, where Bob entered into dental practice with Dr. L.E. Von Berg. The Yeagers had two sons, Tim, born in 1950, now a lawyer in Chicago, and Dan, born in 1953, now an ocularist in Iowa City.

The guiding principle of Bob’s life was “Service to Others”. It was a principle he both preached and practiced, and he endeavored to pass it on to his sons. Dr. Yeager was always engaged in one or more projects whose goal was the lifting up the disadvantaged, healing those in pain, and bringing cheer to the down-hearted. He was a lifelong member of the Lions Club. He and his wife sang in the choir at the First United Methodist Church (later Trinity) for more than 40 years. He played the tuba in church and community bands. Bob was the Chairman of the Board of the Salvation Army, and was the driving force behind the construction of a new church building in the early 1960’s. He was one of the founders of the Iowa Lions Eye Bank, and volunteered his professional skills for many years in the harvesting of donated eyes. For several years, Bob and Bernie, with the help of the Lions Club, organized water ski parties for the blind at the couple’s cottage on the Cedar River.

Bob narrowly escaped death during the Charles City tornado of 1968 when his dental office was destroyed. Later that fall, he began what was to become the great mission of his life, the providing of free dental and medical services, and the building of clinics, throughout northern Mexico. It was a ministry he dubbed, “Mission Medico Independencia”, and over a span of nearly 25 years, he organized teams of volunteer doctors and dentists to travel to rural communities in the deserts of Chihuahua and Durango. It is estimated that Dr. Yeager and his family brought enough dental equipment into Mexico to equip more than 200 dental offices, and that he extracted thousands of teeth and made hundreds of dentures, all at no cost to the recipients.

Bob served as a trustee of the College of Dentistry at the University of Iowa. He was also an avid pilot, and served for many years on the Charles City Airport Commission, including several years as Chairman. Bob received many awards for his service during his lifetime. He was the Chamber of Commerce’s Man of the Year in 1961. He was commended for his work in Mexico by Governor Bob Ray, and by President Richard Nixon. The clinic of the Chihuahua School of Odontology was named in honor of Bob and his brother Walter, also a dentist, of Waterloo. The Iowa Dental Association created a new annual award in their honor, the “Outstanding Service” award, of which the Yeager brothers were the first recipients in 1984. In 2003, the Lions Club honored Dr. Yeager with its Warren Coleman award for outstanding service. Bob and Bernie loved to travel and to fish, and to spend summers in their cabin in northwest Ontario which they co-owned with their friends Victor and Phyllis Meyer.

In 1994, they traveled to Germany, Austria, and France revisiting places where Bob had served during World War II, and reuniting with a French family Bob had befriended during the war years. They visited England in 2001. Bernie and Bob celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in 2007 with a reception at Trinity United Methodist Church. Bob was a much loved husband, father and grandfather.

He is survived by his brother, John Yeager of Arvada, Colorado; his sons, Robert T. (Tim) Yeager (Caroline Moores) of Oak Park, Illinois, and Daniel C. Yeager (Jeanine) of Iowa City; and his granddaughters, Hanna Gugliuzza (Joseph), Hillary Yeager, and Ayshe Yeager.

He was preceded in death by his wife Bernie in August 2008 [see her obituary in this collection], his parents, and by his brother Walter and sister Bernadine.

The family welcomes flowers or memorial donations to Trinity United Methodist Church, which the family would like earmarked for the music program.

[A Hauser Funeral Home obituary -- www.hauserfh.com ]


 

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