By David Vitrano

L’Observateur

LAPLACE – Theodore Roosevelt once famously said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

When he said this, the “big stick” he was referring to was a powerful military force, but the adage can be applied to many situations.

In the case of soft-spoken Reserve native Robert Taylor Sr., it is his many accomplishments that do the talking for him.

Taylor recently retired from the Air Force after a 26-year career in which he didn’t miss a single day of service. In that time, during which he worked his way up to the rank of master sergeant, he gained a reputation as a reliable and capable structural maintenance technician, and he has the medals to prove it, having earned no less than 15 awards and decorations in his over a quarter of a century of service to his country.

Now the designation “structural maintenance technician” may not ring a bell to most, but his duties can best be indicated through one of his finest achievements.

While flying with the 926th Fighter Wing, a New Orleans-based unit, on a mission in Denmark, an A-10 fighter suffered a bird strike, much like the one that recently forced a passenger jet to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River.

Without the right equipment or staff in Denmark to make the necessary repairs to the plane, Taylor was forced to improvise.

“I did the repair on the plane. I was the only sheet metal guy there,” Taylor explained with typical modesty.

As there was no hydraulic equipment to form the metal, Taylor had to do everything by hand. It was a painstaking process, but he soldiered on, as it were, as best he could and completed what was supposed to be a temporary repair to the plane.

The plane made it back home with the patch on it.

Then, when Taylor was serving in the Middle East as a part of Desert Storm, that same plane was there, too. And it was still flying with the same repair affixed to its wing.

Small surprise then that Taylor was named structural maintenance shop supervisor for the station in Belle Chasse until it was closed in 2006. He served in the same post at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi until his recent retirement.

Besides such accomplishments, which Taylor spoke of in a misleadingly nonchalant manner, he said one of the most enjoyable aspects of his time in the military was the opportunity to see the world. He traveled to such locales as Italy, Germany and Denmark, far from his home in Reserve.

And while that may have been one of the perks, it also presented its fair share of drawbacks.

“The hardest part was being away from your family,” he said.

Indeed it was his family that kept him from enlisting in the military full-time all those years ago. He had dreamed of joining the Air Force, but when he married his wife, Mala, 38 years ago, he knew that could not be an option. So instead he went to work for Marathon and chose to serve his country as part of the reserves.

His wife — and now his three children and seven grandchildren — don’t have to worry about him being away from home for extended stretches anymore. Long shifts at the refinery are the most they have to put up with, and that must bring them some sort of comfort.

But it didn’t stop them from welling with pride as they watched him receive the accolades he so deserved at his retirement ceremony.