Robert A. Hedstrom

BYRD FUNERAL HOME ON WEST MAIN

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Posted by: ByrdFuneralHome
[email protected]
334.793.3003
Date: Jun 12 2015 9:17 AM

Byrd Funeral Home

3409 West Main Street

Dothan, AL 36305

334-793-3003

www.byrdfuneralhome.com

Robert A. Hedstrom

Robert “Bob” Hedstrom, a former resident of Dothan, died June 5, 2015 in Hermitage, TN. He was 97 years and 364 days old.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be held 2:30 p.m. Friday, June 12, 2015 at St. Columba Catholic Church with Father Patrick Gallagher officiating. Burial will follow in Memory Hill Cemetery with Byrd Funeral Home directing. The family will receive friends 10-11 a.m. Friday morning at Byrd Funeral Home.

In lieu of flowers memorials may be made to Catholic Charities, P.O. Box 230, Mobile, AL 36601 or to your favorite charity.

Mr. Hedstrom was born June 6, 1917 in Gardner, Massachusetts. In 1939, he graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute (RPI) with a Bachelor of Industrial Engineering (BIE) degree and joined the Hedstrom Company at its Fitchburg, Massachusetts plant. During World War II he managed the Hedstrom Company’s manufacture of radar box parts, F4U Corsair ailerons and Sikorsky RB-4 helicopter blades. In 1946 he married Elizabeth “Betty” Menchion who remained his wife until her death in 2006. In 1950, he moved to Dothan, Alabama as the assistant general manager of the Dothan plant and served as a director in the company until retiring in 1981.

Mr. Hedstrom was active in Dothan civic organizations and charities, including the Dothan Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, the Dothan Boys Club, the United Way, the Red Cross, and the Rotary Club (Paul Harris Fellow 1984). After his retirement and as part of a charitable program, he prepared income taxes for 17 years at the Dothan Library and later in Hutto Tower at the Baptist Village. A member of the St. Columba Catholic Church, he has been in charge of various Catholic charity drives in the Dothan parish of the Mobile diocese. In 1989 he was invested as a Knight of St. Gregory for his support of the Catholic Church. In the 1990’s he led the funding drive to purchase the Holtkamp pipe organ for the St. Columba Catholic Church, and he conducted genealogical research with trips to New England and Salt Lake City, Utah.

He has been a member of the Dothan Boat Club at Compass Lake, Florida since the late 1950’s and served as its secretary-treasurer until the early 2000’s. In 2006 he moved with his wife from the house he had built in 1950, 1603 Tacoma St., to the Terrace at Grove Park. In 2015 he moved to Hoover, AL.

Survivors include five sons and two daughters-in-law, David Hedstrom, Pleasant Grove, AL, Steve Hedstrom, Foothill Ranch, CA, Joe Hedstrom, Hoover, AL, Tom and Sabrina Hedstrom, Nashville, TN, and John and Jackie Hedstrom, High Point, NC; five grandchildren, Amy and Brian Stewart, Arlington, TN, Amanda Hedstrom, Memphis, TN, Allison Hedstrom, Memphis, TN, Casey Hedstrom, Princeton, NJ, and Daniel Hedstrom, Pleasant Grove, AL; and one great-granddaughter, Reagan Elizabeth Stewart.

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