The Life of Bobbie Neal Overman, Part 1

Grade School Photograph

Bobbie Neal Overman was born February 17, 1929 in Humboldt, Kansas. He was the fourth and final baby born to Ida Marinda Foster and John Carven Overman. They had not been planning on another child, but welcomed him nonetheless. The spelling of his name - Bobbie - was an accident made by the attending nurse; it was supposed to be Bobby, but most people simply called him Bob.

Bob was a rambunctious child. When his older brother Ray (his senior by ten years) ordered him to wax his car before he went on a date, Bob did as he was  ordered, then hid on the floor in the back of the car and went on the date with  his unsuspecting brother. When brother Dean teased him for having to stay indoors because he was sick, he threw a butcher knife at him from his bedroom window. Fortunately the knife landed at Dean's feet, but it made a lasting impression on Dean and got Bob into deep trouble with his parents.

The first eleven years of his life were spent in and around Iola, a small town in Allen County, Kansas. He attended a two room  school house with his cousins where he excelled in math, often helping older children with their math homework. He rode his uncle's draft horse bareback to and from school with his cousins.

On 18 April, 1941 tragedy struck; Bob's next oldest brother, John  Max, died from a burst appendix. Max was seventeen, a gentle boy who couldn't bring himself to butcher his mother's chickens for dinner. Looking back on it years later Bob said it was probably for the best; Max would have been drafted into the army and would have likely seen combat. If Max couldn't kill a chicken, he said, he wouldn't have survived the battlefield. But as a child, he mourned Max's death deeply. Shortly after, the Overman family moved to California.

High School Graduation - 1946

The shift from a small western town in Kansas to the much larger town of Long Beach was a shock. Bob started the seventh grade at Charles Lindbergh Jr. High, wearing his best overalls the first day of school. When he came home that evening he told his mother he refused to go back unless she bought him a pair of pants - none of the kids in his class wore overalls and he wasn't going to tolerate being called an "Oakie".[1]

The Overmans moved from Long Beach to El Monte around Bob's freshman year in high school. He was a good student; though he had a difficult time with spelling, he excelled in math, history, and music. When he graduated his junior year, the school offered to pay his way through community college if he would teach history, but his father was not impressed. Having only a second grade education, John saw little value in a college education. He insisted that his son go to work and make a living instead.  Attending college would have given Bob a deferment from the draft, but could have landed him in the Korean War. Obeying his father, Bob went to work in a local slaughterhouse.

Having always been short, it came as quite a surprise when the summer after graduation, he began to grow rapidly. Within a  few months he gained nine inches in height, going from five feet, six inches, to six feet, three inches. The growth spurt was so fast that his joints ached and he developed stretch marks in his skin. Prior to the spurt, he had thought about joining the air force to become a fighter pilot before the army could draft him; now he was suddenly too tall to pilot a fighter plane! He was drafted into the army around 1947 or 1948. The exact time is unknown; many records during this time period burned in a fire and Bob's records were among those destroyed.

Bob's Draft Registration Card

What is known about his days in the army are in the form of anecdotes. He was stationed at Camp Roberts, and still having much of the boisterous behavior of a teenager, he played a few practical jokes on his superiors. In one instance his commanding officer told him to water all the flowerbeds around the camp parade ground while the platoon went on a march. As soon as the platoon was out of sight, Bob ran to every spigot in the barracks area and turned the water on full. When he heard the platoon returning, he turned all but one of the spigots off. By now the entire parade ground was flooded, but he stood by the same flowerbed where his commanding officer had left him, still holding the running hose over the now-submerged flowers.

On Leave From Camp Roberts

While at Camp Roberts he took several tests which helped him gain the rank of sergeant. He also took a language aptitude test where it was discovered he had the ability to not only learn a language quickly, but speak another language without an American accent. This placed him in a unique category and he was soon deployed to East Germany in special ops. What happened while he was there is vague, but what little is known isn't pleasant.

Upon returning to the states Bob was involved in an explosion that severely damaged his lower back. He was told he would never walk again, but stubbornly refused to accept the prognosis and proved the doctors wrong. It was during this time of recuperation that he got involved in a fight with a superior officer in the officer's lounge. The officer made fun of his slow, shuffling gait. Words escalated to blows. Bob grabbed a beer bottle from the bar and smashed it over the officer's head, fracturing his skull. This led to a court martial in which the officer was found guilty of antagonizing Bob and starting the fight, but Bob was found guilty of deadly assault. He was given an honorable discharge thereafter, but his rank was reduced to private.

Once out of the army Bob went through a variety of jobs, among them cowboy, milkman, auctioneer and schoolbook salesman. It was while he was setting up a schoolbook display that he met his future wife. Janet Chamberlain was a 5th grade teacher a McCord School in the town of Orange Cove, California. It had been a long day for her and she had a terrible sinus headache. What was worse, there was someone in the cafeteria next to her classroom playing the radio very loudly. She resolved to march into the cafeteria as soon as school let out to give whoever it was a piece of her mind. That was her plan, but it didn't turn out as she expected. Upon seeing Bob, she forgot about the headache and spent the next two hours talking to him. He asked her out to dinner that night. At dinner, he asked her to marry him. Janet was seeing someone else, but didn't hesitate to say yes. On June 8th 1957, six months after they met, Bob and Janet were married.

Marriage to Janet Chamberlain, June 8, 1957

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[1] "Oakie" is a derogatory term that was used for migrant workers, primarily from Oklahoma, but also used for any poor family that was from the western states. Bob, incidentally, never wore another pair of overalls again.