Robert was born in an upstairs room at 2727 West College in Shreveport. His father, Dr. Rudolph Wilson, was attending physician. His mother was Ura Blanche Buchanan. Robert graduated from Fair Park High School in 1940, and entered Centenary College at age sixteen. He joined the service in February of 1942, choosing the Navy because he was "offered a position in the medical department." After boot camp in San Diego he was sent to the nearby Naval hospital in San Diego where he stayed another few months. He was then ordered to the Marine recruit depot in San Diego where he helped doctors treat soldiers on sick call. Later he was sent to Medical Field Service School and given orientation as a corpsman for the U.S. Marine Corps. Robert sailed to Pago Pago in Samoa, and later to Maui in Hawaii, and was assigned to I Company, Third Battalion, Twenty-second Marine Regiment. In Maui in late 1943, his regiment was trained in amphibious landings in Higgins boats. He shipped out to combat in the Marshall Islands where the Twenty-second served as floating reserve in the battle for Kwajalein. He went ashore and into combat for the first time at Eniwetok in February of 1944, where he had his first taste of combat. He hit a third island but he does not remember the name. In his corpsman bag he carried first aid, including bandages and morphine. "We stopped bleeding, get them on the stretcher, and evacuate them to the back where they could do something more for them," he says of his duty. Four corpsmen served in each rifle company. Fifteen corpsmen and a doctor at an aid station served each battalion. Robert next served in the Marianas Islands campaign at Saipan and then Guam. Robert had served twenty-two months when the Navy sent him back to the states. He visited Shreveport on a thirty-day leave, then shipped out again from California. In the New Hebrides he was assigned to the USS Cassiopeia (AK-75), a cargo ship he boarded in Pearl Harbor. He found himself sailing back to San Francisco where the vessel was converted into a carrier for pontoons, which were used to build temporary harbors. The war ended, however, and the ship was ordered to Norfolk to be mothballed. Robert was discharged in New Orleans. Back in Shreveport, he graduated from Centenary College, finished medical school at Tulane University, and entered obstetrics and gynecology at Confederate Memorial Hospital. He married Mary Pilgreen on March 30, 1956. They would have three children and three grandchildren. Robert retired from the medical practice in 1985. He later worked at a Baptist hospital in Indonesia as mission service