By Deborah Larsen
Robert Rolan “Bob” Bushman
Robert Rolan “Bob” Bushman was born in Detroit, Michigan, on November 24, 1924, the son of Clarence and Bertha Biddlingmeier Bushman. The Bushman family moved to Rochester in 1934 and lived on South Street. Robert’s father was a machine shop superintendent before launching his own company, Bushman Gear & Engineering Works, in 1944. Bob attended Rochester High School.
In January 1942, Bob entered the U.S. Navy. He was stationed aboard the destroyer USS Kendrick, which was providing convoy escorts across the Atlantic and into the Mediterranean Sea. Bob was transferred in August 1943 to the destroyer USS Picking. The Picking was first assigned to the North Pacific area and spent eight months off Alaska, where, according to Bob’s letters home, he never saw the sun. The Picking was then sent to the Philippines to provide escort and protective screening for ships staging the landing at Leyte. Bob served aboard the Picking until the end of the war.
Bob wrote home to say that boredom was a serious morale problem on his ship, and asked his mother to procure a harmonica for him. “If we can just have a chromatic harmonica to blow and blow while crossing the wide waters of the world, it takes some of the monotony away,” Bob told his mother in Rochester. Mrs. Bushman enlisted the help of Rochester Era readers to help her find a harmonica to send to her son, as the instruments were apparently scarce during the war. Two harmonicas were donated in response to the appeal, and Bob wrote back to his mother to express the thanks of the entire crew of the Picking.
Bob was discharged from the Navy in December 1945. He returned to Rochester, married, started a family, and worked with his father at Bushman Gear.
Robert Rolan Bushman died at age 80 on February 8, 2005, and was laid to rest in Lake Orion, Michigan.