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Phil Gehrels uploaded photo(s)
Wednesday, March 31, 2021
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Mrs. Roberta B Nall, 84, from Wellmore Estates in Lexington, South Carolina, sometime in the morning around 6 am on March 18th, 2021 passed away quietly in her bed after a long battle with dementia.
Robbie as she liked to be called was born on the 10th of March 1937 near Madison County, Georgia on a cotton farm of her parents Cecil Brown and Selma Brown (Smith).
Mom was a true southern belle in every sense of the word. Her siblings were Winnie Brown (1930), Joe Brown (1932), and Eula B. Eskew (1944) who tended the farm and helped pick cotton to make ends meet.
She finished high school and soon made it down to Atlanta to work as a secretary where she met her future husband George Manuel Gehrels. George born in Costa Rica who was studying Civil Engineering at Georgia Tech at the time was called to service as a paratrooper for the 82nd Airborne Division during the Korean War however he passed his two-year enlistment in Europe.
Robbie and George reunited in Atlanta to finish Georges Civil Engineering degree at Georgia Tech and were soon married in 1957. George decided to move the family to Costa Rica to work at an office for EIMCO heavy mining equipment trying to sell equipment throughout Latin America as he had a great background in that area and was fluent in Spanish. He travelled often and Robbie made ends meet and slowly started to learn Spanish too.
However, on their way down to Costa Rica, Robbie then pregnant was sure the doctors due date for George Philip Gehrels would get them to Costa Rica so they made a quick stop to visit Grandpa August Gehrels in Boca Raton, Florida when her water broke, and Philip was born a little early on May 25th, 1958 at Miami Dade County hospital.
George worked hard and received a large order for EIMCO machinery to build a railroad in the jungles of Guatemala. They relocated the family there as Robbie was then pregnant with Anthony Patrick Gehrels. The southern bell was put to the test riding the train for medical checkups and shopping with assistance at the local market sometimes riding a small maintenance trolley heading the other way.
Robbie gave birth to Patrick on May 23rd, 1959 on the train during a medical exam in which Philip almost a year old fell off an exam table in mid birth popping his two baby teeth through his lower lip bleeding so profusely that it required stitches all the while Patrick looked on peacefully at the mayhem occurring around him.
The three departed on a trolley in a downpour making it safely home three hours later. If that did not show her courage and stamina in a foreign country two years removed from Atlanta city life nothing would.
New EIMCO orders sent the family first to Salt Lake City and then to Birmingham Alabama where Angela Maria Gehrels (1963) and William Daniel Gehrels (1965) were born while making lifelong friends (even spoke English) in Alabama during a charged social climate.
Next came a move to Puerto Rico for the final touring of new places and new smells which Robbie took in with the four of us even when during a category 4 hurricane hit the Island and did most of the damage in the lowlands while we were in the mountains fighting to keep the plywood on the windows from flying off into the gale force wind.
Finally, back home in Costa Rica, settled back in to their house near the Paseo Colon boulevard, Robbie and the kids returned to their schools while George began preparations to start a water well drilling company after negotiating a 10 year contract with the Costa Rican government to drill 500 wells in all the small towns without clean running water.
Boy what a feat, for Robbie to take care of the household alone while George was visiting problematic wells being drilled for weeks at a time that required every bit of his civil Engineering skills and teamed up with his cousin Peto Arguello and good friend Rodolfo Suarez from Argentina to make it work.
Robbie did not stay idly by as a housewife in San Jose because many of the wells being drilled along the Pacific coast were near the town of Nosara and Guiones beach known for its great surfing.
Investors started a corporation to bring potential buyers and started building houses and a Golf course to help sell the lot with or without house. Robbie became their secretary and was tasked with picking up clients at the airport in a Volkswagen bus.
Usually, Robbie delivered them to their hotels, the next day and she would take them out to see downtown San Jose or run them up to the small airport to take a Cessna to Nosara’s dirt airstrip. Amazingly, she worked in our school schedules and picked us up on a few trips to the airport.
Robbie was an amazing lady for sure that held dinner parties for clients and potential Costa Rican large companies and officials to help George during this period. George bought a small farm in Liberia, Guanacaste and drilled five water wells to flood a part of the farm to grow rice and bought a prized Brahma bull and ten breeding Brahma cows.
No matter when we travelled on vacations or fishing trips, this farm was our base of operations. Robbie endured the heat to cook meals and wash clothes by hand and sometimes came along with us on a fishing trip on a narrow wooden boat carved out of a single tree knowing she could not swim.
As kids, we only saw the positive and fun things going on with great memories, while Robbie had to deal with having little money because the government bureaucracy paid months late for each of the 250 wells drilled by 1972. Then came the devastating news when a newly elected government cancelled the contract for the remaining water wells and nationalized the water drilling business for government municipalities to themselves.
These are my memories during the early days of my mother “Robbies” life! Memories to be continued in New Orleans and Atlanta in part 2!
Love, Phi Gehrels
Atenas, Costa Rica
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George Philip Gehrels Posted Apr 3, 2021 at 3:34 PM
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The family of Roberta B. Nall uploaded a photo
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Friday
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April
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Friday, April 16, 2021
Fort Jackson National Cemetery
4170 Percival Road
Columbia, South Carolina, United States
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