GEORGE ROBERT “BOB” SWEET
1929 - 2021
Few men positively impact everyone they meet and leave the world a better place. Such a man was George Robert “Bob” Sweet, who passed away on November 5th, 2021, in Santa Maria, California, at the age of 92.
Born a farm boy in Callendar, Iowa, on February 10th, 1929, Bob's world expanded with the birth of his brother, Loren Dean Sweet, two years later. Bob's youth was defined by the Great Depression and World War II. He worked as a teenage apprentice machinist at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, California, while his Naval Officer father was deployed to the Pacific during the war. Bob Sweet enlisted in the Navy Reserve in 1947, became a submariner, and used the GI Bill to earn a degree in Civil Engineering from the Healds College of Engineering in San Francisco.
He married Betty (nee Park) Sweet in April of 1954 in Wasco, California, and began work on construction projects in the San Francisco Bay, including the Carquinez Straits Bridge, among others. Shortly afterward, he was called to active duty for Cold War service and was a deck officer on minesweepers and destroyer escorts in the Far East and the North Atlantic. His first son, Richard, was born in Vallejo, CA, in 1957, followed by his daughter Becky. In 1955 Bob Sweet went to work for the California Department of Highways and Bridges, where he worked for 15 years, serving as the resident engineer on numerous freeway overpasses and other projects still in use by thousands of people daily. Bob and Betty lived in Bakersfield, CA, for 37 years, where daughter Sondra and sons John and Tim were born. All the Sweet children graduated from East Bakersfield High. After retiring from the State of California, he worked as a Civil Engineer for Kern County and later pioneered environmentally-sound methods for oilfield wastewater disposal.
A tall man with steel-blue eyes and a ready smile, Bob was a member of the Church of the Brethren, the Caledonia Lodge of Free & Accepted Masons, and was active in Scouting. Having long been a deer hunter and fly fisherman, Bob developed a passion for backpacking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, instilling a love of wilderness in many other people. After retirement, Bob and Betty relocated to Colorado Springs, where they were busy with church activities, Navy League, Kiwanis, Masonry, and being grandparents to twelve grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
In 2010, health concerns caused Bob and Betty to move to Santa Maria, CA, where they continued to live until Bob's recent passing. Bob's faith in the Lord and his devotion to Christ our Savior guided him in his service to others. Having brought knowledge, joy, and wisdom into the lives of countless friends and family and improved the lives of thousands that would never know him, Bob Sweet truly lived by his motto to “Leave the world a little better place than you found it.”
Services will be on November 13th at 4 PM at the Harbour Evangelical Church at 750 East Foster Road in Orcutt, California.