Discovering The Mature Lifestyle
Golden Valley vet spends 33 years giving back Page 5
Veterans May Issue
May 14, 2015
Music, Lions keep WWII vet active in Eden Prairie BY SUE WEBBER CONTRIBUTING WRITER Bob Carling, 96, of Eden Prairie was drafted into the U.S. Army in April 1941 and served for 4½ years in the 34th Division before being discharged in September 1945. The 34th Division out of Minnesota spent nine days at Ft. Snelling, took a train to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, then spent two months training in Ft. Dix, N.J., and eventually was shipped to Ireland in 1942. “We had a terrible time going across, of course,” Carling said. “Subs traveled in ‘wolf packs’ (groups) in those days. We were in a convoy of 29 ships.” He recalls 3,500 men on the ship. “I slept on the mess bench,” he said. “There was a terrific storm the next day and it seemed like we were the only boat on the whole ocean. The convoy left us. We had gun crews at both ends and guys on the railing trying to see the telltale periscopes coming up from the subs. “A couple of destroyers came back and picked us up and brought us back to the convoy. I guess the Lord was with us.” Carling’s troop spent the next seven months in Ireland, then traveled through the Strait of Gibraltar and into Oran, North Africa. “We got there a little bit after they invaded Casablanca,” Carling said. “The French were in charge.” From there they had an 800-mile trip across the Atlas Mountains to Tunisia. “We pretty much operated out of there,” Carling said. “Every night German planes dropped phosphorus bombs. It was so light you could read a newspaper. They bombed up to beat the band every night.” The division’s next stop was a seaport out of Naples, Italy. Carling was reassigned after he was sent to Ft. Sam Houston, Texas. He was expecting to be sent to Japan, but was reassigned to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, where he became an instructor in anti-aircraft fire control. “After six weeks of class, they gave me one apolis Post Office. In the 1950s, his brother-in-law was starting a garbage company in Bloomington and Carling and his stepson helped out on Saturdays, taking a route of about 100 customers. “My brother-in-law said to me, ‘Why not start a route in Eden Prairie?’ People were using burning barrels then and hauling things to the dump.” So Carling wrote up business cards by hand and began by charging customers $1 a month. “The first week we had eight barrels. We didn’t have a truck, but my brotherin-law offered us the use of his pickup truck.” What evolved was Carling’s 30-year business as Eden Prairie Trashtronics, the city’s first trash collector. Trucks were printed with Carling’s motto: “Your satisfaction guaranteed or double your trash back.” Carling retired at age 69 in 1988. His life took another turn when wife Betty suffered a stroke that resulted in permanent damage to her left side. Even so, the two attended 19 Lions international conventions with two other couples. They managed to get to Hawaii twice, he said. “I pushed her in the wheelchair for Lions parades, which lasted three to four hours,” Carling said. “We were in all the big cities, including Toronto. We saw Niagara Falls, too. We had a trailer in Arizona. We went there every January through March and Betty did ceramics there. I’ll never regret that.” In 1982, Carling was named Small Businessman of the Year for Minnesota, and he and Betty were sent to Washington, D.C. for three days with 49 other contestants. Then-President Ronald Reagan announced the winner in the White House Rose Garden. After Betty’s death in 2003, Carling continued working with the VFW, American Legion and Eden Prairie Lions, a group of which he is past president and current song leader. He has continued his lifelong love of singing, one that began when he was 9 years old and joined the boys choir at Augustana Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. VETERAN - TO PAGE 6
Bob Carling is pictured at the Eden Prairie Lions Let’s Go Fishing fundraiser/fish fry March 14, 2015. (Submitted photo) to teach,” Carling said. “I had to be there eight hours a day. Engineers out of Detroit used to ask me questions. I was there until they dropped the atomic bomb, close to a year.” Carling married his cousin’s widow, Betty, in 1946. Her husband was killed on Normandy Beach. “I knew her pretty well before I went into the service,” Carling said. Betty had a son, Larry, 3, and she and Carling became the parents of daughter Nancy. Now he has four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. After the service, Carling worked in an auto shop, then carried mail while working out of the downtown Minne-