Bobby hails from Snyder, Texas, which everyone agrees is “smack dab in the middle of nowhere”, but a great place to grow up. It was an oil boom town in those days, but today it’s a wind-farm boom town. Ah, progress!

His US Air force career included writing mission planning code for satellites at Offutt AFB, Nebraska; working to improve enlisted training, testing, and promotion systems at Brooks AFB, Texas; and helping to plan Clinton-era “peace dividend” force reductions at the Pentagon. He retired as a Major in 1995. His chair wasn’t incinerated on 9/11, but it may have been knocked over.

Along the way he earned a B.S. in Math at Texas Tech in Lubbock; an M.S. in Operations Research at AFIT in Dayton, Ohio; and a Ph.D. in Management Science & Information Systems at U.T. Austin.

While working on his Ph.D., he found time to volunteer at the Austin Rape Crisis Center. He manned phones on Friday nights, talked to survivors well into the wee hours, and was named Volunteer of the Year in 1988.

His wife, Elizabeth Slaughter, is his best beta reader and sounding board by far.