By Bruce Barton
 Mr. Staver |
To his loving sons, Robert Staver was more than a lieutenant colonel who tipped the balance of rocketry intelligence - and possibly the balance of power - from Nazi Germany to the United States during World War II. He was a wonderful father who was as loving as he was brilliant.
Mr. Staver, a Los Altos resident for more than 40 years, died Dec. 8 at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Palo Alto. He was 86.
Sons David and Doug described their father as an extremely talented man who was not only an accomplished engineer and inventor, but a strong pianist, songwriter and artist. With an IQ of 170, Mr. Staver was not only the “most intelligent man by far that I have ever met,” said son David, but also a loving man who would do anything for his sons.
A native of Portland, Ore., Mr. Staver was driven and accomplished from the beginning. He was senior class president at Grant High School in Portland, receiving straight As throughout. He was the front-runner on the state champion mile-relay track team.
After graduation in 1933, Mr. Staver worked during the Depression as a delivery person, saving money for his family and for college. He drove from Oregon to enroll at Stanford University in 1936, and majored in engineering. He joined the U.S. Army during World War II.
Col. Joel G. Holmes recognized Mr. Staver’s talents and encouraged him to get into research and development with the Army’s ordnance department. Mr. Staver worked on several notable tasks with the Army, doing research on piercing shells, compiling notes on Nazi “buzz bombs” that were being dropped in London and compiling a blacklist of top German scientists.
During the latter stages of the war, when the Allies were advancing into Germany, the move was on to find the whereabouts of these top scientists and documentation on the V-2 rockets the Nazis had been developing. Hitler had these scientists scattered throughout the country and put into hiding. The Americans captured a man that Mr. Staver came upon, discovering that the man was one of Germany’s top scientists, second or third down the “black list” from the top man, the legendary Wernher von Braun.
“Dad created a rapport and tricked him into revealing the location of the documents,” David said.
The documents, all 14 tons of them, were in a part of Germany to be turned over to the British. In a quick, covert sweep, Americans went to the secret location and took the documents. But Mr. Staver convinced the top brass the scientists themselves were needed as well. He played a major role in recruiting several of them, including the biggest prize of all, von Braun. Knowing Stalin and the Russians were angry with anything German, the prospect of the United States seemed far more enticing to these scientists than staying behind and waiting for the Russians.
David spoke in awe of his father’s technical abilities, describing the writing of a detailed report about his work for the Army, using hundreds of index cards scribbled in the smallest of print, on both sides. “He was just a machine the way he was able to synthesize the information,” David said. “He had a photographic memory and pretty much remembered everything he ever learned.”
But the war and his Army experience had taken a toll on Mr. Staver. Hospitalized at one point for exhaustion, he left the Army vowing never to work for anyone again.
After the war, Mr. Staver’s work took an abrupt left turn. He headed to Los Angeles and wrote music. Among his pieces was music for the song “Sheila,” which Frank Sinatra recorded.
He also worked as an engineer and inventor and in the late 1950s attended the Stanford Business School as a graduate student. There, he met his wife, Nancy. The couple moved to their house on Pepper Drive in Los Altos in 1960.
David and Doug both talked of their father glowingly, describing a man who loved unconditionally, who played practical jokes at the dinner table and who more than a few times could be seen in the middle of Pepper Drive, waving a handkerchief at his sons as they left for college, tears in his eyes.
“When you came home, he was at the door,” Doug said.
David recalled several of his father’s words of encouragement: “Try to make a difference.” “All I can do is encourage you to do your best at everything.” “Never be afraid to try - you might surprise yourself.”
“He was friendly with everybody, everywhere,” Doug marveled. “Wherever he was, he was talking to people.
Even when hospitalized with dementia in his later years, whether at Rosener House in Menlo Park or at the VA hospital, he was quickly known as the friendliest guy around.
“He was a man who lived with passion and lived from his heart,” David said.
Added Doug: “A wonderful human being.”
Mr. Staver is survived by his sons, David of Boulder, Colo., and Doug of Washington, D.C.; and his wife, Nancy, of Los Altos. Services, held Sunday, were private.
