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Robert Soule, retired Navy commander, decorated WWII pilot, dad to 12, dies at 91

By JOE SIMNACHER Staff Writer
jsimnacher@dallasnews.com

Robert M. Soule

The numbers add up to an amazing life for Robert Marion Soule, a retired Navy commander.

He was decorated for flying 51 combat missions during World War II. He flew 160 types of aircraft — some as a test pilot — and made 713 aircraft carrier landings during his 22-year career. He was also father to a dozen children — seven biological offspring and five nieces and nephews he took in as his own.

Soule, 91, died Sunday in hospice care at Universal Health Services in Fort Worth of complications of a stroke.

Services will be at 11 a.m. Tuesday at Lucas Funeral Home in Hurst. He will be buried at 1:30 p.m. at Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery.

“He really loved flying, it didn’t really matter what it was,” said his son Kent Soule of Haltom City.

Soule was twice awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and received three Air Medals for piloting Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers in the Pacific during World War II. He later served as a test pilot, flew with an anti-submarine squadron and was head of the Pacific Fleet’s anti-submarine warfare and Navy special-weapons schools.

He tested an estimated 15 aircraft types at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland, where he became friends with colleagues who became astronauts, his son said.

“He enjoyed the thrill of flying something that he’d never flown before, doing something he’d never done before,” his son said. “He was never afraid to try any kind of plane or do anything they asked him to do.”

Soule embraced challenges at home with the courage of a test pilot.

In 1952, he was the father of three children, when his wife’s twin sister was killed in a traffic accident. He and his wife — who was pregnant — adopted the dead woman’s four children. Mr. and Mrs. Soule later added twins of their own and adopted another child from another death in their extended family.

“My parents said that they wouldn’t split them up,” Kent Soule recalled. “The said, ‘All these kids have is each other and we’re going to keep them together.’

“There’s never been any separating, like ‘you’re a cousin,’” he said. “They were nothing but brothers and sisters.”

Soule was born in Phoenix, where he learned to fly at 16 and worked as a crop-duster and began aerobatic flying. He graduated from Phoenix’s Union High School in 1938 and studied aeronautical engineering at California Polytechnic State University. In California he worked at Lockheed Aircraft Co., where he was in the civilian-pilot training program.

He enlisted in the Navy in October 1941, before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. In August 1942, he married Dortha Baker. Mrs. Soule died in 2006.

Soule and his family moved to North Texas in July 1959, when he was assigned to be the Navy plant representative and test pilot at Vought Aircraft in Dallas.

In 1962, Soule was deployed with a squadron of F-8 Crusaders aboard an aircraft carrier during the Cuban missile crisis. He came within two minutes of launching an attack, when President John F. Kennedy called it off, he said for a history of his life.

Soule retired from the Navy in 1963 and worked for Vought for 15 years.

In addition to his son, Soule is survived by seven daughters, Gayle Eriksson of Valencia, Calif., Lynne Walker of Scottsdale, Ariz., Vicki Soule of Chandler, Ariz., Dee Yeager of Phoenix, Dorris James of Fairview, Debbie Soule of Arlington and Denise Soule of Frisco; four other sons, Gary Peterson of Yuma, Ariz., Dr. Robert Soule Jr. of Houston, Ronald Soule of North Richland Hills and Donald Rohasek of Palestine, Texas; a brother, Donald Soule of Phoenix; 34 grandchildren; 56 great-grandchildren; and five great-great-grandchildren.

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