Robert Douglas Sidnam

Robert Douglas Sidnam died 7 October 2022, 8 days shy of his 99th birthday. Bob was born, raised, and
schooled in Staten Island, New York, to Frederick and Estelle Knudson Sidnam.
In the early 1940s he met his wife, Ollie Elizabeth Bumgarner (12 March 1923-14 May 2016), when she
was living with a sister and attending business school near his parent's Staten Island home.
Bob was of the generation impacted by World War II. Two weeks after configuring chronometers for
atomic bomb testing on Bikini Atholl in the Pacific, he was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army and
returned to N.C. State College to finish his engineering studies.
With his wife Beth in tow, whom he married 4 March 1944, Bob joined thousands of young men at now-
NCSU taking advantage of the G.I. Bill, living on campus in Vetville. Two of his brothers-in-law, Charlie
and Tom, joined him, with Tom often babysitting Bob and Beth's children, born while they were in
school in Raleigh. The children, Pat and Robert, often had playdates and Charlie's daughter Maryanne.
After graduation, Bob and Beth and their two children were soon joined by another son, John, and
moved frequently throughout the United States (Tennessee, New Jersey, California, Massachusetts, and
Alabama) where Bob applied his B.S. and M.S. in computer, aerospace, and defense engineering jobs for
companies such as RCA and Systems Digital.
A city boy, Bob's first taste of rural North Carolina came when he visited Beth's home in Millers Creek in
the early 1940s. He often chortled about taking a bath in a galvanized tub in front of the kitchen
woodstove or seeing an outhouse (or johnny, as he called it). He was so intrigued by this W.P.A.-built
wooden structure that he bought it and kept in place.
After retirement, he and Beth later moved to Millers Creek, living near the old homeplace and their
grandchildren. During his retirement with Beth, they traveled frequently, often visiting the nearby Blue
Ridge mountains, and staying home and playing Scrabble. Bob and Beth's house served as the focal
point of reunions for the Bumgarner aunts, uncles, and cousins in North Carolina and Virginia.
Well-organized and with wide-ranging interests, Bob immersed himself in flying, photography, hunting
deer, fishing for trout, collecting fishing gear, and plinking at targets. He later cataloged his 1000s of
color slides and conducted geneaological research of Beth's family in Wilkes and Ashe counties and his
family in New York, Norway, and Sweden; read history and the Bible; and watched lots of movies. Tuned
into current events, especially conservative politics, Bob kept up with the latest issues, often sharing his
opinions with family, conservative and liberal alike.
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