Robert Gray Platt was born May 18, 1915 and graduated from Otsego High School. He graduated from Michigan State College in 1939. He was in ROTC and went into the U. S. Army after graduation. As a career officer, he served in WWII in India, Burma, and China, and was on the Islands of Saipan and Hawaii after the war. Other places he served included North Carolina, Washington, D.C., Indianapolis, Indiana, (three different assignments at two different times), Korea (after the war), Carlisle, PA, Stuttgart, Germany. His last assignment was as head of ROTC at Michigan State University. He retired in 1969 with the rank of colonel and worked for MSU as an administrative assistant in the health center.

Leona Catherine Gordon was born Nov. 11, 1916 and grew up in Holly, Michigan. She graduated from MSC in 1940 with a degree in Dietetics. She served a one year residency in Dietetics at Miami Valley Hospital in Ohio and worked as a dietitian in Battle Creek when Bob was overseas. Bob and Leona met at MSC and were married on Sept. 18, 1941 in Ohio. She was able to join him after the war in Saipan and Hawaii. They raised three daughters, two of which were MSU grads. Leona died in 1972. In 1973 Bob married Willeen Shaver Timmons, whose late husband Guy Timmons had been a professor at MSU. They moved to California in the mid-1970s .

Bob died in 2010 at the age of 95 and Willeen died in 2013. Both are buried in the national cemetery near Davis, CA, as both were in the military. Both of Willeen's sons are MSU grads.

Source: Marilyn Porter.