Robert Fletcher Young Garrett, III, went to his eternal reward on May 28, 2021. He was born at home in Haddonfield, NJ to parents Margaret (Davis) and Robert Y. Garrett, Jr., and was educated in the Haddonfield public schools. He matriculated at Bowdoin College (class of ‘59), where he was a member of Beta Theta Pi, and graduated from the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1962. He spent summers during college and graduate school as a passenger brakeman on the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines, his second favorite vocation.
After law school, Bob entered the U.S. Coast Guard reserve. He completed boot camp in Cape May and he attended the Navy weather school at NAS Lakehurst. He later rose to a second-class petty officer (E-5) as an aerographer; he received a commission and retired as a lieutenant.
Bob’s 57-year legal career, specializing in probate and estate work, began with a clerkship with Hon. French B. Loveland at the firm Loveland, Mott and Hughes in Ocean City. After the firm’s many name changes, it became Garrett and Batastini prior to his retirement.
Early in his career, he served as Ocean City Solicitor and Assistant Cape May County Prosecutor. He served as Cape May County Bar Association President, Chairman of the Board of Cape Savings Bank. He was the Chair of the District Legal Ethics Commission, as appointed by the New Jersey Supreme Court; and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the New Lisbon Developmental Center, as appointed by Governors of both parties.
He was the local Rotary Club President, Assistant Governor of his Rotary district, Ocean City Cultural Arts Center President, Secretary of the Union Chapel by-the Sea, and Secretary of St. John Lutheran Church. Bob was a 32-degree Mason, a Shriner, a member of the National Railway Historical Society for 68 years, a member of the Ocean City Yacht Club, a member of the Board of the Shore Medical Center Foundation and a member of the Ocean Heights Presbyterian Church.
In Ocean City he met his wife, Mary Simmler, a fellow south-ender; they married in 1968. He is survived by Mary and daughter Mary Lucretia Foust of Linwood, daughter Elizabeth Garrett Mayer and her husband Jeff, their children Garrett and Margaret (Greta) of Charleston, SC, and daughter, Margaret Fletcher Garrett of Washington, DC. He is also survived by his sister Margaret Lucretia Garrett, MD of Washington, DC.
Well-known for his quirky sense of humor and bowties, Bob enjoyed traveling with Mary, especially to Maine or by train, cooking (before it was cool) and gardening. He rarely missed one of his daughters’ swim meets or field hockey games in their decades of competition (and even earned himself a Varsity letter for contributions to the Ocean City High School swim team). After moving to Beesleys Point in 2002, Bob created his own G Gauge outdoor garden railroad, the Androscoggin and Atlantic Railway, where he served as General Manager. On weekends in the summer, when not playing with trains, Bob could be found boating in the Great Egg Harbor Bay or riding his lawn tractor.
Friends may call at the Ocean City Tabernacle on Thursday, June 3 from 9:30am to 11:30am. A Masonic Funeral Service will be held at 10:30am and Christian burial service will commence at 11:30am. Interment and Committal to follow at Seaside Cemetery.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Rotary International Foundation (https://www.rotary.org/en/donate)
Bob was a friend who helped me with a legal problem in 1967. He was a dedicated friend and lost touch with him until 2020, and then only briefly. I remember Bob for his humor and intense interest in railroading when we went searching for a train accident in the late ’60s in Buena Vista. We traveled to Bromley, Vermont for a week’s worth of skiing. He would not miss a Rotary Meeting and attended the Bromley Rotary to win a bottle of whisky.