“My family calls me Robert but I say everybody who likes me calls me Bob,” said native Lopezian, Robert “Bob” Burt with his frequent mischievous half smile.

“My maternal grandmother, Margaret Greenwood, delivered me at home in 1932,” said Burt.  “She was kind of a midwife.”

He went to Center School for first grade, to Port Stanley for two years, then to the new school that’s there now.  After accreditation, he was in the first graduating class with three others.”

When his wife died, Burt’s paternal grandfather, John, brought his five children to the island from Iowa in 1906.

Two sisters on the island helped raise the youngsters. John and his brother, Joe, built Center School (Grange Hall), Mud Bay School, and constructed Sears Roebuck kit houses.

“I was too young to know about the depression,” Burt claimed. “We always had enough to eat — fish, clams and a big garden.

“I was driving semi-tractors in the field when I was about six. You took an old car, stripped it down, shortened it up, put in a second transmission, and tried to have a heavy duty rear end in it and maybe bigger tires. You could really gear it down for power.  We used it for haying, pulling wagons and hay rakes.

I built one as a high school project and built a buck rake from an old junk car using pole teeth on the back. We’d gather hay shocks on it, race to the barn and put it on slings to go into the barn and then go after another load.

I didn’t care for horses,” Burt said.  “I was glad to see our first tractor, a 1941 Ford after being on a waiting list.”

Burt did ride a horse during the war because fuel was scarce.

“Dad went fishing in Alaska for 25 years. During the winter he worked at MacKaye Harbor repairing and building fishing boats,” Burt said.  “Dad built his own 34-foot gillnetter and launched it here in 1934,” he said pointing to a slope beside his home on Davis Bay.

One of Burt’s two older brothers lives on Lopez.  His sister lost her hearing when she was two and boarded at a deaf school in Vancouver, Wash.

Home during the summers, she was proud of doing whatever the boys could do.

“When I was home, I cut cord wood and fished from a reef net at dad’s fish trap at Flat Point,” said Burt. “I didn’t like farming. We milked 29 cows night and morning. In February of my last year of high school my dad passed away.  I fished that summer and then I went to Seattle.”

Burt met Vivian Stenvall when he “went to a place in Kenmore that had Scandinavian dancing.  She grabbed me there,” Burt said with blue eyes twinkling.  “Best thing that ever happened to me.”

The couple married in 1955 and lived in a home he built at Lynnwood.

They have three children and six grandchildren.

“I started working for Boeing in the experimental division for the B52 studying blueprints most of the time,” Burt said.  “That job didn’t suit me so I quit.”

Burt worked at Howard Motor Ford in Seattle where he took machinist apprenticeship and welding classes at night.

“It was a good outfit,” Burt said. “The job title changed over the years from Auto Mechanic to Automotive Mechanic and then to Automotive Technician but it was all the same job.

I don’t even want to look under the hood of cars now.  They’ve changed so much.  I stayed at the dealership for 17 years until they sold the business.”

For the next 25 years, Burt was Automotive Foreman for the Seattle school district.

He and some coworkers had regular string instrument jam sessions.

Previous generations of his family included violin makers and Burt has repaired some.

His grandfather’s violin is on loan to the museum.

“I was very fortunate when I retired in 1992,” said Burt. “I saw an ad for a tractor that needed repairing, so I bought it and restored it. I have about a dozen of them now — John Deere, Farmall, Allis Chalmers, Ford.”

He submitted photos and a write-up about a tractor he restored and they were accepted for a calendar.

“We’ve traveled some.  The Burts were from Scotland and Vivian’s family was from Sweden so we went there and have been on some cruises,” he said. “We went to Arizona for about ten years but we’ve sold the trailer.”

Burt has made repairs to the museum and was instrumental in their restoration of the Port Stanley school.

“Then the Grange Hall was in tough shape so I was involved in getting that fixed up.  I helped a bit on Woodman Hall.  Being involved in the repair of these buildings allowed me to meet and enjoy other volunteers. I need to keep my hands busy and my mind working,” Burt concluded.