Bobby grew up in Spiro, Oklahoma, and attended Westark Community College here in Fort Smith on a full baseball scholarship from 1987-1989, earning an Associates of Arts Degree in general studies. While at Westark, he received the “Outstanding Freshman Baseball Player Award during the 1987-88 season, and was Captain of the baseball team both his freshman and sophomore years. His baseball talent then landed him a full scholarship at Northwestern State University (NSU) in Natchitoches, Louisiana. He met his wife, Julie Schulze, while attending NSU. Julie was on the NSU track team while Bobby was on the NSU baseball team. Shortly thereafter, Bobby decided to join the Air Force. Prior to joining the Air Force, Bobby and Julie were married on July 10th, 1993. He then joined the Air Force, and finished his Bachelors of Industrial Engineering degree through the satellite program from the Southern Illinois University College of Engineering. While in the Air Force, he was stationed in Cheyenne, Wyoming working as an Information Management Technician (basically working with computers). During this time, he additionally received an Associate of Science Degree in Information Management Technology from the Community College of the Air Force. For two years, Bobby volunteered for “Special Friends”, a big-brother type program in Cheyenne. This “Special Friends’ group adopted little boys and did ‘big-brother type’ activities with them weekly, such as taking them to ball games, the movies, or the park. “It was a very gratifying experience,” he said. Bobby’s goal as an airman was to become an officer, a somewhat difficult accomplishment for an enlisted airman. When he applied in 1995 to officer’s training school, he was one of 1070 applicants. The possibility to be selected didn’t look too good as only 60 would be chosen. As he was waiting to hear about officer training school, a computer systems operations position became available at Baldor in Fort Smith, Arkansas. With Bobby’s family in Oklahoma, and his wife’s family in Texas (Cut-n-Shoot, Texas, population 689) the prospect of getting back home seemed like a great opportunity! After flying down and interviewing, he received a fax one day on base with an offer from Baldor, which he accepted! The very NEXT day his commanding officer called him to say that he had been accepted to officer training school. This was a very difficult decision for Bobby since it was his dream to become an Air Force Officer ever since he enlisted in the military. However, family meant more, so Bobby turned down officer training school and joined the Baldor team in April of 1996, and he and his wife bought a house in Mansfield, Arkansas!

Six months after becoming an Operations Analyst, Bobby wrote the first-ever Baldor Operations Manual, which described operation tasks and instructions in a clear concise manner. It was an invaluable document that served to keep the computer room running smoothly. What Bobby liked most about the Operations Analyst job was the people he worked with, and the freedom to take the initiative to write the Operations Manual. That manual caught the eye of the Applications Programming Manager, and Bobby quickly moved into an Applications Analyst position. He started with FlexFlow support, taking care of the daily issues, trouble-shooting problems, and writing queries to retrieve information. Bobby also performed systems work on the 12 AS/400’s (IBM mid-range computer systems) in the motor production plants. The AS/400s are used to run the FlexFlow manufacturing system. He was trained on how to install and upgrade the AS/400’s in a short amount of time. Other projects he has worked on was the creation of new box labels for all the motor plants and writing the SAP Scripts used for printed output (bills of lading, purchase orders, invoices, acknowledgements, etc.). In addition, Bobby has been editor and designer of the Information Quarterly (Baldor Information Services Newsletter), performing a very professional job getting quality information out to Baldor’s customers. Since Bobby has a definite flair with organizing material and creating professional looking documents, he was asked to create a user-friendly documentation system for the SAP system that Baldor uses. He refers to it, as BUSDOCS and it contains user documentation for every aspect of the Baldor Uni-System (BUS). He created a website for the documentation, while learning web programming in the process. The website is accessible directly from within BUS. In addition, Bobby was the lead programmer on the first-ever Baldor Intranet website, which was put into production on May of 2003. Furthermore, he was the lead web programmer for the presentation layer of the new BaldorVIP 2.0 that was released on February of 2004. BaldorVIP 2.0 is a website that allows Baldor’s customers to purchase motors on-line via shopping cart technology. Another ‘First-Ever’ for Baldor which Bobby played a lead role.

Bobby’s hobbies are fishing with his sons, racquetball, softball, weight lifting, and drawing, He and his family reside on their poultry farm in Spiro, Oklahoma and have recently built their dream home. They have three sons, Trey, and the Twins, Cory and Conner. Bobby and his family attend Spiro First Assembly Church of God.