A Tribute to Bob Inglis, High Twelve Club-October 10, 1927

By Chas. G. Bird, Stockton Lumber Co., Stockton, Calif.

Mr. Chairman, Members of the High Twelve Club and guests:

When some of the boys asked me to say a few words at this meeting as a tribute to our departed member, Robert Inglis, I felt _utterly inadequate to comply with their request and so expressed myself to them and to your President, but when I was made to realize that no one, outside of possibly our President, Mr. Falconbury, could give you the same picture of his life that I could, I consented to undertake the task.

I have known Bob Inglis for over fifteen years.

I have known him in a way that few men have had the opportunity of knowing him.

I have known him as competitor in business and as a fellow-'r,vorker in association and civic work.

I have known him to be absolutely fearless, never hesitating a minute to declare, his principles, regardless of rvhat it might mean to him in a business way or socially.

I have known him to be a man, who, when he thought he was right would fight to the last for his principles, but I have known him also to be a man, who, when he found he was wrong, was not ashamed to confess it and would quickly make amends to anyone whom he had injured.

I have found him to be one, who, when once his word was given it was as good as any bond. When Bob Inglis told you he would do a thing you could rely absolutely on his doing it.

I feel that the retail lumber business of the state has lost one of its finest characters and best leaders, a man who r,r'as always fighting for the higher standards in business life and a strict adherent to the best business ethics.

For the fifteen years that I have known Bob Inglis we have been competitors in business and it has given me a better opportunity than any other relationship, to see and judge what a man really is, for the acid test comes, not in your relationship in the pleasures of social life, nor your contact in the work and pleasure of association activities. but it comes where steel meets steel in the keen competitive struggle for business, and where the temptation is always foremost to keep just within the law or even step beyond the border between rvhat is right and wrong in seeking unjustifiable advantages, and in all these fifteen years of our business life he has shown himself to seek, not just to keep within the law, but to give the other fellow as fair an advantage as he would ask for himself.

The foundation and structure of his social and business life seems to have been planned and constructed along the lines of those words:

"For when the One Great Scorer comes To write against your name, He writes-not that you won or lost, But how you played the game."

Bob Inglis played the game and played it right. He always met you "on the level," he endeavored to live "by the plumb" and he has now departed from us "on the square."