Robert Boyd was born in San Diego, California.

 

At age six he moved to Germany where he lived in Hurkst just outside Frankfort for three + years.

 

At around age ten, Robert moved back to the United States to Fort Lewis, Washington, a US Army post, where his father was stationed.  He lived there for several years until his parents purchased a home in Lakewood, Washington.

 

It was here, beginning at the young age of 12, that Robert began his intense training under his fathers, the local NRA rifle and pistol instructor, tutilage, as a highly competitive match shooter.  Every weekend of his life from that point on, until he left high school anyway, was spent training at various rifle ranges in his home state, on Fort Lewis and in shooting in matches across the west coast, the Fort Lewis rifle range being used as his hub and main base for training. 

 

Fort Lewis's large training grounds, thousands of acres of untouched lands were the fields and forests Robert trained himself in while he became proficient with both rifles and pistols.  It was there that Robert learned about long range and extreme distance shooting with unscoped and scoped rifles and hand guns while competing with his friends.  Robert spent many hours every week in the forests of Fort Lewis and although he never fired on an animal, of which there were many on the post, he learned many self-taught stalking techniques that served him very well while targeting them for dry fire practice. 

 

In his high school years Robert Attended Clover Park in Lakewood, WA. where he delved into more shooting competitions, even at the high school.  Many high schools had on campus indoor shooting ranges back then.  His only other fucus during those years was his greatest love, what he strove to be associated with, aircraft mechanics, aviation sciences, airframe, power plant  and commerical aviation.  Most of which were taught by Mr. Dale Welfringer at the Clover Park Vocational Technical school, all part of the Clover Park school district.  And then, after his parents built a home on Lake Louise in Lake City, WA. while his dad was in Landstuhl Germany operating as a first sergeant, while commanding five hundred men, Robert transfered to another school district, to Lakes High School, also in Lake City, Washington.

 

Robert, angered over President Kennedy's assasination and at how the war was going in Vietnam, wanting to do something, anything, to help his country fight communism and the enemy.  In that effort he left high school half a year early, during his senior year, to join the United States Air Force.  He took his oath of service for the  Air Force in Seattle, Washington with several of his friends from both his high schools.  One of their fathers, an Army officer, swore them in.  They all took basic training together but, upon its completion, were transfered to different locations within the US for their continued training in various fields of endeavor.  Robert was offered a position at Lackland AFB in Texas, as a drill instructor by the unit commander that had trained him but passed on the offer so as to allow himself to become the aircraft mechanic he'd always wanted to be. 

 

When he returned home, after his tour of duty, Robert never saw any of the men he'd joined the Air Force with, all his friends, again. 

 

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