Obituary of Robert R. Garnett

Robert R. Garnett, 90, died Saturday at the Gettysburg Lutheran Retirement Village in Gettysburg, PA. A resident of Baldwinsville, NY since 1957, he was born in Demarest, NJ on May 7, 1917 to Arthur and Ethel (Stelfox) Garnett. He grew up in Demarest, and attended Tenafly High School in Tenafly, NJ and Monticello High School in Monticello, NY, from which he graduated in 1935. In 1940 he graduated with a B.S. in civil engineering from Union College in Schenectady, NY, where he played on the football and baseball teams and was a member of Theta Delta Chi fraternity. After graduating from college, he joined the Navy V-7 program and trained on the Prairie State in New York City. Commissioned as an Ensign in the US Navy in January 1942, he was assigned to the mine sweeper YMS-104, which on November 13, 1942, swept the first German mine discovered outside New York Harbor during WW II. He subsequently served as the first Commanding Officer of the minesweeper YMS-176, which escorted convoys in the Gulf of Mexico, and as Executive Officer and then Commanding Officer of the USS Quest (AM-281), which operated in the East China Sea and off Japan at the close of WW II. During the Korean War, he again served in the US Navy as Chief of Staff of Mine Squadron 5, based in Long Beach, CA, and deployed to Korea. He received numerous decorations, including the Distinguished Service Medal. He retired from the Naval Reserve with the rank of Commander. After the war, he was employed as a sales engineer by the Johns Manville Corporation, in New York City and later Syracuse, NY. After his retirement from Johns Manville, he remained active in local charitable, civic and political organizations, serving on the Baldwinsville School Board, the Board of Directors of the Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency, and the VanBuren Republican Committee. He was a docent at the Shacksboro Schoolhouse Museum in Baldwinsville and delivered Meal-on-Wheels for years. In 1942 he married the former Margaret Ann (Peg) Shaweker, of Dover, OH with whom he had three children, He was predeceased by his wife and by a daughter, Margery Granett Frawley. Survivors: include daughter Mary Garnett and husband Tony Blagrove of Arlington, VA; Son, Robert R. Garnett, Jr. and wife Joanne of Gettysburg, PA; sister, Alice Mapes of Fayetteville, NY; five granddaughters, Margaret, Katherine, Emily, and Diana Garnett of Gettysburg, PA; and Olivia Garnett of Washington, DC; Great Grandson, 2nd Lt. Thomas Garnett, USMC, stationed at Camp Pendleton, CA; nephews, John Mapes and wife Anne of Hawaii; and Bruce Mapes of New Jersey; niece Janet Mapes of San Francisco, CA; and his devoted friend and traveling companion, Marion Pasqua of Syracuse NY. Services will be private. Burial will be in Riverview Cemetery, Baldwinsville.