Bob Wade

[By RALPH MUNRO, Special to the Review]

Our friend and classmate, Bob Wade, died Aug. 29 at his Fairfax, Va. home. He had been battling cancer and heart problems for a number of months.

Bob was born in Bremerton along with all of us “war babies” in 1943, and was raised in the big house on the corner of Wing Point Way and Cherry Street. His mom was a secretary in Winslow and his dad a lineman for Puget Power.

We started kindergarten together in the old Winslow Housing Project buildings in 1948, shortly after all our Japanese classmates came home from the camps. Our schoolroom was a rich mixture of Filipinos, Native Americans, Japanese, caucasians, you name it, and we sure had fun in school. All through our lives we have remained close friends.

Bob went to Sunday School at Bethany Lutheran Church, learned to dance at the American Legion Hall, helped us paint the roads when we graduated from Bainbridge High in June 1961, and probably drank a little beer at the bonfires we had down by Creosote Beach.

When we started thinking about college, one of our Bainbridge High counselors told Bob that he really “was not college material” and that he should consider “learning a trade.”

At Western Washington College he met his wife Gail from Ketchikan, Alaska. Married for more than 39 years they brought a son Rob and a daughter Valerie into this world.

Following his graduation from Western Washington College, Bob went on to receive a master’s degree at the University of Washington. Then he came home one night and told his wife Gail that he was joining the Army.

He went in as a private and joined the intelligence branch in Korea. Bob’s undergraduate degree was in philosophy, and he used to laugh while telling people that “the Army is the only place you can utilize a philosophy degree!”

He loved proving people wrong, and he did it again and again by succeeding in everything he did. Bob was amused by the fact that when he interviewed with the CIA as a young man, they told him that “he didn’t have a lot to offer.” He relished being able to work there as the liaison from the Federal Bureau of Investigation more than 20 years later.

Bob joined the FBI in 1970, and as the years went by, he held several high posts with the bureau. After graduation from the National War College in 1984, he became Assistant Soviet Section Chief of the FBI’s National Security Division until 1992.

He then was counterintelligence adviser at the CIA until 1994. Then he returned to the FBI as a special assistant to the National Security Division.

After his first retirement from government work, he joined America Online in 1996 as the director of security until 2002. At that point, he went to work handling security for the Department of Energy.

When his job focused on the Soviets, he became immersed in Russian literature and art, a passion that never left him. As the world changed, he became close to a number of high-ranking Russian intelligence and military figures, some of whom became close friends and also attended his funeral.

Bob liked his reputation as the “thinking man’s agent.” He loved Ingmar Bergman films, classical music, the theater and esoteric books with titles no one had ever heard of. No matter how intellectually powerful his reading material was, he was just as excited as any 12-year-old child when the latest Harry Potter book came out.

He installed an extra large postal box at his home to accommodate the daily delivery of newspapers, mail and books.

Throughout the years, he never forgot Bainbridge Island. Returning here for numerous reunions and family gatherings, Bob was always a major contributor to the Class of ’61 Scholarships given each year at Bainbridge High School graduation.

On Sept. 20, Laurie Glass Yelle and I attended Bob’s memorial service at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Both of us knew Bob nearly all his life, starting in kindergarten on Bainbridge.

The afternoon was bright, clear and sunny. We arrived to find hundreds of FBI agents, CIA associates, friends from the Washington, D.C. area, classmates from Bainbridge Island, people Bob had worked with around the globe, and family members, all gathered to honor Bob’s life. He spent his entire career protecting our country and our citizens.

As we drove in a long procession out to the site of the ceremony, American flags were unfurling in the light breeze off the Potomac River. The firing squad was in place, the honor guard stood at attention and the cemetery director stood with one of the “Ladies of Arlington” who had come to present the flag to Gail Wade “on behalf of the President of the United States and a grateful nation.”

Bob’s good friend Jay Corcoran, the retired director of intelligence for the Customs Service, delivered the eulogy. A lone bugler played Taps, prayers were said, the firing squad fired a multiple gun salute, and the American flag was carefully folded by the honor guard for presentation by the “Arlington Lady.’’

A fine American, molded, shaped, educated and trained on Bainbridge Island, was then laid to rest.