Robert Lee Comer ’55
Robert Lee Comer ’55 passed away April 25. Bob was born February 26, 1933, and his family moved from New York to Philadelphia during World War II. He graduated from Marple Newton High School, where he played three years of varsity basketball and baseball, winning a championship with the former. Bob arrived on the Hanover Plain in September 1951 and tried out for the freshman baseball team in the fall. Bob recalled: “I thought I did a good job in the fall, but the spring was as disaster. I could not track the ball.” (He needed glasses.) He graduated with a degree in economics and spent 1956-58 in the Army Signal Corps. Upon discharge, Bob spent the following two years at Wharton, where he earned his M.B.A. before joining Colgate Palmolive. Specializing in management information, Bob had the opportunity to participate in the development of the UPC bar coding system as chairman of the administrative systems committee of the Grocery Manufacturers of America. Leaving Colgate in 1981, Bob joined Digital Equipment as an information systems consultant, retiring in 1992. Bob married Evelyn Martin in 1960 and they settled in Tenafly, New Jersey. They bought a beach house in Lavallette, New Jersey, and loved splitting their summers between there and Tenafly. Bob is survived by Evelyn, who he noted in a reunion book was the borough’s first acting female mayor.
