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Lt. Col. Baldwin L. Troutman Jr.

Obituary

Lt. Col Baldwin L. Troutman Jr., USAF retired, father, grandfather, husband and uncle, passed away peacefully Friday night, May, 29, 2009. He was 91 years old.

Baldwin was in many ways a larger-than-life figure. A member of the Greatest Generation, he was born in Fort Valley, Georgia, on Oct. 29, 1917.

Baldwin grew up on a plantation near the Okefenokee Swamp in southeast Georgia. He was hunting food for the family there from the age of 12, and said that his mother would cook anything he shot, although she never found a way to make alligator taste good.

During his time in high school in Albany, Ga., in the time of the Great Depression, Baldwin worked for a coal and ice company. After high school, he was a salesman/driver for Dr Pepper.

He enlisted in the Army (later the Army Air Force) in 1941 and met his wife, Favorita, in Louisiana during training. He rose through the ranks, from private to lieutenant in two years, and spent most of the war in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as a meteorologist. His first son, David, was born there.

After the war he was sent to the University of Michigan, where he got a master's degree in physics and became father to his second son, Mark. After 24 years in the Air Force working mainly with nuclear weapons, he retired as a Lt. Colonel and joined Mitre Corporation. In this period he met his second wife, Marianne, and later adopted her son, Charles.

At Mitre, Baldwin was the director of an enormous project building a worldwide telecoms system for the U.S. military, the biggest project of its kind at that time. Later he became director of Mitre's training college. In this period he also became a Mason and advanced to Grand Master. And he was part of the first delegation of American scientists to visit China.

His was a life out of the American Dream. After a career that went from plowing behind a mule and hunting alligators to satellite-based telecoms, nuclear weapons and a guest appearance in international diplomacy, he retired to Newnan, Ga., in 1985. There he devoted himself to building his dream home and to good works, working with Marianne for many years in different capacities for the Newnan Hospital volunteers. He referred to himself in that period as one of the "pink ladies."

Baldwin was mentally very active until the end. Although nearly blind, he used the Internet daily and kept up on the latest developments in the world, including quantum physics and medicine, by listening to books sent to him on tape from the Library of Congress.

Baldwin was a Southern gentleman of the old school, a soldier, a scholar and a scientist. He will be remembered by all who met him. He will be missed.

He is predeceased by his son, Mark, his second wife, Marianne Troutman, and his brothers, Thomas and Glenn Troutman. He is survived by his sons, David and Charles Troutman, five grandchildren and his first wife, Favorita Troutman.

He will be buried at Arlington on September 2. A memorial service will be held at McKoon Funeral Home in Newnan, Ga., at 5 p.m. on Friday, June 5. Visitation is between 3-5 p.m. Friends and acquaintances are invited to attend. Don't send flowers. Give something to someone who needs help instead, as Baldwin himself did for so many years.