He was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, although the family lived in El Dorado. Robert spent his last two years of high school at New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, New Mexico, where he was trained in the horse cavalry. Enrolling in Centenary College he joined the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) and was sent to Clemson University. When the Army canceled the program, he was ordered to basic training at Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina. As part of the 1255^th Combat Engineer Battalion, he reached Vianden, Luxembourg "where we got caught in the Bulge and became infantry real quick," he recalls. Robert, who carried a Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR), also cleared land mines, a stressful chore. "Stress at eighteen is not stress at fifty," he says. "I know if you're not scared, you're sick." After Germany surrendered, the battalion was broken up and he was sent to Camp Lucky Strike in France to await reassignment, likely to the Pacific. Japan surrendered, however, and Robert came home. After leaving the service in January of 1946, he earned a degree in economics from Centenary, and then went to work for Peterson Drilling Company. He later worked with his father in the oil business until the elder Stacy's death in 1964.