Speaker Today
Tom McGehee has been Museum Director for Bellingrath Gardens and Home since 1994, and has researched the history of Mobile for more than 40 years. He is a past president of this club and was named Rotarian of the Year in 2012.
He is married to the former Ceil Smith of Monroeville and has a daughter, Megan, living in Athens, Greece.
Today’s Program: Life Before Air-Conditioning
The first air conditioning did not come to Mobile until the completion of the Saenger Theatre in 1927 and it would be another 25 years before affordable residential units arrived. How did our ancestors survive life before air-conditioning?
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Bob Cochran was born at Naval Station Argentia, Newfoundland, Canada. His family tradition is that it was an awfully cold winter that year or he wouldn’t be here today! He grew up in Montgomery, Alabama where he graduated from Lanier High School. He then attended Auburn University where he graduated in 1974 and was commissioned into the U.S. Navy from the Auburn University Naval ROTC program. He attended Navy flight school and received his Naval Aviator wings of gold in 1975. He served in several Navy aviation squadrons, aboard the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy, graduated from the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama; served as the Commanding Officer of U.S. Naval Facility Brawdy, Wales, and finished his Navy career as a member of the faculty of the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He retired from the U.S. Navy as a Commander in 1994.
After the Navy he attended the Cumberland School of Law of Samford University and started his own law practice in Auburn, Alabama. In 2005 he received a call from Auburn University to teach their Business Law course in the Harbert College of Business, which allowed him to become a full-time faculty member teaching Business Law and Aviation Law to over 20,000 students during his 20+ years of university teaching.
In 1998 he bumped into an old Navy buddy living in Auburn who invited him to lunch, which turned out to be an Auburn Rotary Club meeting. He was in that club until 2011 when a meeting day change forced him to transfer his membership to the Lee County Sunrise Rotary Club. He has served as Treasurer and President of the Lee County Sunrise club and as an Assistant Governor before his selection as District Governor.
Bob and his wife Karen live here in Auburn and are empty nesters. They have three children, Christy, Kelly and Clint, son-in-law Steve, and their first grandchild, Ellie.