Robert Rule

September 30, 1931 - November 3, 2021

Lt Commander Robert (Bob) Raymond Rule passed away after a short illness. Born on Sept 30, 1931 in San Antonio, Texas, in 1951 Bob was accepted at the Naval Academy class of 1955. After graduation, on a weekend leave from flight school at Pensacola Naval Air Station he met Adelaide Jeanette Colbert of New Orleans, in the old St Peter St. carriage entrance to Pat O’Brien’s in front of the piano bar. Boots was after all a senior - she just didn’t say high school! They married in June of 1957 and had their first child, Robert Raymond Rule, Jr in May of 1958. Two more children followed: Leslie Colbert Rule in 1959, and James Bradley Rule in 1961.

As a naval officer, Bob’s career was varied. He taught engineering at the Naval Academy, served as Executive Officer aboard the destroyer USS Robert McCard, (DD-822 19641966). He served three in-country tours in Vietnam between 1966 and 1972. In 1966, his first assignment was to US MACV-SOG, a highly secretive and clandestine joint service operation between US and South Vietnamese forces. He returned stateside to San Francisco in 1967 with his family meeting him in San Francisco during the Summer of Love. His son Robert well remembers walking down Haight St on the way to Kezar and Forty-Niner games during the 1967-68 season. Bob returned to Vietnam In 1970 where he served as Assistant Senior Advisor, Rung Sat Special Zone 1970-71, and finally, in 1971-72 as Senior Advisor, Rung Sat Special Zone. During this posting, he was shot down in his helicopter, although not injured or captured. He returned to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1972 at the height of North Vietnam’s Easter Offensive and finished his naval career at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo. No doubt Bob agreed wars are easy to get into but difficult to extract from and history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.

Bob was an avid reader and scholar of the early Cold War with an emphasis on Middle East relations and politics and had a voluminous library of long out of print books.

Into retirement, Bob was a respected referee and umpire for high school football and baseball in Napa and Sonoma counties. He had a very dry wit and remained sharp as a tack, throwing out quips to the very end.

Bob lived in San Francisco the last 40 years of his life enjoying his walks, smoking cigars, shopping in Laurel Village, and partaking in his “can’t lose” sports betting. For all of those years, he had the companionship and love of his best friend and “sweetheart,” Jeanne Zitzer. She preceded him in death by six months. He was also preceded in death by his parents John William Rule, himself a navy veteran of WW2 stationed on the USS San Francisco 1944-45 and a veteran of battles in the Pacific including Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and Thelma Martin Rule. Bob’s aunt and uncle, Marie and (Roland) Mike Rule, were also instrumental in raising him. He is survived by his three children Robert, Leslie, and James (Carmelita), three grandchildren Thomas, Michael, and Andrew, and one great grandson, Charles.

Bob was born of pioneer stock, raised in Texas; his paternal grandfather migrated south from Cincinnati and the maternal line, the Chaudiers and Martins, still live in Cajun country, Louisiana. He was raised on BBQ and baseball (and as he often told us “In his day, baseball was played in the summer in wool uniforms!”), and volunteered for more tours than required in the jungles of Vietnam.

Bob was loved and will be missed!

Interment is 1:15 Tuesday December 20th, 2022 at Sacramento Valley National Cemetery in Dixon, CA