The One, the Only . . .

There Will Never Be Anyone Like the Lootz
Nov 23 1948 - Jul 2 2020

Three Amigos in FL Preparing for Senior Tour - Circa 2011

(and Bob with his beloved peeper keepers!)

“So, what are your wrists doing in your backswing, do you pronate or supinate?” Bob once asked me, regarding my crappy golf swing. (My answer is unprintable here.) That, in a capsule, was Bob Luttio, pondering the imponderable in a way that was wholly unique.

Bob was one of the first guys I met when I joined the 96TAS in 1975. He was pretty new to the unit as well so maybe that’s why we gravitated together. It’s either that or he saw a kindred spirit who enjoyed the occasional adult beverage and discussing arcane topics (with one of us not nearly as deep as the other.) It was the beginning of a 45 year friendship that ended far too soon.

To say that the air force was a strong connection would be an understatement that can’t be overstated. We had many friends – and adventures - in common which only made all those adventures that much better and, you might say, it was kind of a Mexican standoff among us regarding those adventures and who did the dumbest things. “Chickens Bones West” comes to mind. (Oh, never mind, forget I mentioned that!) Some, however, were unique to your own one-on-one experience with Bob. I had the pleasure of many trips and experiences with Bob but it took me a while to understand and appreciate his single-mindedness to go his own way - and often at the most unexpected times. You might be in some odd city on an air force trip, having a beer, talking smart then you look around . . . and Bob was gone! Two hours later, walking down a crowded sidewalk . . . and Bob would literally pop up behind you. Where had he been? Looking at some cemetery? Pondering the statues in the square? Who knew?! This happened to me in Key West once; scared the hell out of me but it also conditioned me to Bobtopia which I forever after appreciated.

Two Pilots in AK  Planning for Flight (Or Hunting Trip))

He was just as unique as an airline pilot, a job that gave him license to do this wandering all over the world. He once told me that his favorite job was as a first officer on the DC-10 going back and forth over the Atlantic. That was because there was so much time to think about stuff. Unlike so many airline crews, Bob was unique in wanting to learn more about the cities rather than where the cheap drinks were. Sometimes he would share a tiny part of those secret wanderings with select audiences with the most understated but absolutely hilarious stories that only he could tell. Who can ever forget his telling of being the only one left on a train in Paris as the lights slowly went out and they parked for the night in some dank station. OMG, I have personally heard it at least 10 times and loved the telling each time. Wish I could hear it just once more.

Bob’s love of technology was legend. Kidding! He had an almost masochistic relationship with a lot of modern marvels; he’d rather punish himself by ignoring such devil’s tools as Word or Excel – or making tee times online.  To his credit he finally did get a smart phone and started to text and even send me links to old show tunes. (Don’t ask, I have no idea why.)

Yet no one was more curious - or knowledgeable about – so many things. He was a know-it-all but in the best sense of the word; if you asked and he answered it was because he actually did know. Last year he told me about keeping caterpillars in jars at his house just to learn how they turned into butterflies. We would walk around Lake Harriet – his childhood stomping grounds – and he could tell what every kind of tree was. Who knew they weren’t all oaks?! (And, of course, he would set me straight on the differences between red oaks and white oaks. Sheesh.) He was his own contractor on a major renovation of one his and Bev’s homes. Do you know how much you have to know to do that?! (Of course, some of that might have been due to being parsimonious, of which Bob could occasionally be accused.)

His independence in thought and action was not always understood by those in authority and this was true of the air force too. One of the other characters of the unit - nearly of Bob’s stature in characterhood - was one Jimmy Jet (a guy as unique as Bob but in a different way who I also met soon after joining and flew with a lot as well.) By virtue of seniority (if not leadership skills), Jet later became our squadron commander. Jet and Bob got along fine (birds of a feather?) yet Jet once told me that Bob was one of his “two problem blonds.” (The other blond shall remain unnamed here.)  You know why? Not because of his flying – Bob was an excellent pilot – but because Jet just really didn’t trust "intellectuals" (although he was no dummy himself!) Well, if the shoe fits . . . Anyway, Bob WAS an intellectual square peg in the round hole of the air force world. Who cares?

Bob and I had another unique connection – our kids. His son Nicky was born almost exactly one month after my son Eric. Ironically, both Nicky and Eric ended up being very artistic and very similar in the kind of iconoclastic lives they chose. His daughter Christie was born just a couple years after my daughter Missy and they were both at the University of St Thomas at the same time.  While the kids weren’t really close, we did socialize - and the kids probably talked about what of couple of geeks their old men were.

A Pensive Bob - Is there Any Other Kind?

We have probably been our closest these past few years as we've had lots of time to share the verities of aging - and became more political. Don’t get me wrong, Robert could be difficult sometimes - duh, really? (But not me, of course.) We disagreed on many things in modern American society. He was an avowed Libertarian (which, as I teased him, is like a Unicorn since there’s never actually been one spotted in the real world) while I am basically a limp wristed, political agnostic, pacifist with liberal leanings. I once accused him of being cynical, he said he was just skeptical. Turns out, he was right again – and maybe I was the cynic. Even though we could drive each other crazy, somehow we never really argued. I know that this took great restraint on Bob’s part because he took his positions on everything a lot more personally than I did. (Which is just another aspect of Bob that one had to understand.) On the other hand, perhaps we’d both just settled into such a comfortable place in our friendship that we didn’t need to agree, we just needed to talk. Indeed, I often learned more about my position from Bob than I had developed myself. I guess he was a thinker who cared about what he thought – a dangerous combination for anyone in modern America and hard on him too.

Our last walk was only a couple weeks before his passing. He was about 2/3 of the way through his radiation treatment regimen so we had to stop once to take a break - a rarity - but pretty understandable that he was a little fatigued. Anyway, we talked about books we had read – which were a lot – and as usual he had some recommendations for me. A couple days later he called me and left a message that said, “Hey Peeterson (he’s the only one that ever called me that) I left those books I mentioned out on your driveway. Don’t worry about returning them.”

God damn it, Bobby, I wish I could return them to you in person right now!

RIP my dear friend.