At age 91, Bob passed away peacefully on October 24, 2026
Bob Bina was preceded in death by his wife of 66 years, Garnet; parents, Wenzel and Jean Bina; sister, Marcie Hundt; and brother, Donie Bina. He is survived by sister Joyce Nolden; brother Dan Bina; children Timothy (Bobbi) Bina and Julie (Dan) Franklin; grandchildren Bob Bina (Megan Rundell); Ashly Eicher; Mary, John, Ken, and George Franklin; and great-grandchildren Xavier Olson and Jack Nickolaus.
Born and raised in St. Joseph’s Ridge, WI, Bob graduated from West Salem High School before joining the Air Force, where he repaired F-86D Sabre jet radars in Okinawa, Japan. He later graduated from Milwaukee School of Engineering and retired from Unisys.
Bob was a loyal Cubs baseball fan and loved polka and square dancing with Garnet. He also dedicated many years to the Czechoslovak Genealogy Society International, creating its website, managing merchandising, and attending conferences.
A celebration of life will be held Saturday, November 7, at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, with visitation at 9:30 a.m., Mass at 11:00 a.m., and lunch to follow in the church hall.
In lieu of flowers or gifts, memorial donations may be made to a favorite charity or St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, 3535 72nd St. E., Inver Grove Heights, MN 55076.
MY LIFE STORY
Robert (Bobby/Bob) Arlen Bina Written: April 2014
EARLY DAYS
My life began November 11, 1934, in Grandview Hospital in LaCrosse, WI. My parents were Wenzel Bina and Georgina (Jean) Arenz. I have two sisters Marcella (Marcie) and Joyce Ann (Toddy) and two brothers Donald (Donnie/Don) and Daniel (Danny/Dan). I am married to Garnet Lueck. We have two children, Timothy and Julie. Ashly Eicher came to live with us in 1996 when she was in the fourth grade. Ashly is the daughter of Kevin Eicher and Wendy (Tim’s ex-wife).
I grew up on a farm on Bina road about 1.5 miles east of St. Joseph Ridge, this was fifteen miles east of LaCrosse. My dad maintained the road that goes past our house; thus, the name Bina Road. He would drive the horses pulling a wagon to Newburg Corners. He would bring back the horse-drawn grader to grade the road. In the fall he would put up snow fences and take them down in the spring. I attended St. Joseph Catholic grade school for my first eight grades. We walked to school and during the winter it was cold, cold, cold. Occasionally my dad would hitch up the horses and give us a ride in the sled. I attended Aquinas High School in LaCrosse for my Freshman and Sophomore years, then switched to West Salem High School for my last two years. For the start of my Junior year a bus from West Salem began to come up to St. Joseph Ridge. I argued with my parents that I could take agriculture classes at West Salem but I really wanted to play baseball. I did play some but I kept score much of the time. I did play enough to earn a letter.
Ernie Banks Bina Farm about 1948 Andy Pafko
We had a great farm dog named Skippy. He was a good friend and a good guard dog. Part of my job was to get the cows just before supper. Skippy and I would go to the pasture. When we saw the cows, I would send Skippy to get them; then he would round them up and we would bring them home.
Donie and I liked to listen to programs on the radio from the time we got home from school until supper time, programs such as “The Shadow”, “The Lone Ranger”, and “Tom Mix”. I also listened to the Cubs when I could. I have been a Cub fan ever since. This was before the Braves moved from Boston to Milwaukee. My favorite Cubs were Andy Pafko (the kid from Boyceville (WI)) and Ernie Banks.
We had electricity installed in the farm buildings about 1940. Prior to this we used kerosene lamps in the house and kerosene lanterns in the barn. In 1948 my dad dug ground out from under the house resulting in a full basement. A furnace, kitchen and bathroom were added at that time. Prior to this, we had an outhouse. My parents did not have a phone in our house until after I left for the Air Force in January 1953.
One summer day I was sitting in our little red wagon and my brother, Donnie, shot his BB gun under the wagon to see it bounce out the other side. He aimed short, it must have bounced off a stone and the BB hit me in the forehead-right above my eye. Nice guy!
In my early days my dad had horses. They pulled all the farm equipment. In August 1941 he purchased a Ford tractor for $1,045. Other tractors like the Farmal, John Deere etc. had a single hitch to pull the equipment. Most of the equipment the tractor pulled had two wheels. The Ford had a three point hitch so it would lift the plow, hay mower, disc and cultivator up with hydraulics. This made it much easier to turn around at the end of the field. It also had a single hitch for equipment such as a wagon, and hay rake.
On Sunday December 7, 1941 (I was 7) we were eating and listening to the radio. We heard on the news that the Japanese has bombed Pearl Harbor. My mother was concerned that her 27 year old brother Bernie Arenz would be called up. He did join the Air Force and served in the U.S.
I spent many evenings during the summer months playing softball with neighbors Loren, Jeanette, Pat and David Klos. During 1952, Walter Hilby and I drove to La Crosse and danced waltzes and polkas most Sunday Evenings to Jerry Gilbertson’s band at the Avalon ballroom. Donnie and I enjoyed building snow igloos out in the yard in the snow bank.
A highlight occurred when I took Beverly Schild to the prom when I was a Junior in high school. Rollie Yanzer and his date drove. I drove and took Mary Schober to the prom when I was a Senior.
U S Air Force
After graduating from high school in May 1952, I worked on the farm for a few months and then got serious about my future. I had no intention to go on to college. The service sounded like a great opportunity for me. I signed up for a four-year tour and left for the Air Force in January 1953. The Korean war lasted through June 1953 but this had no effect on me. I took a train to Milwaukee where we took a series of physical and mental tests to see if we were qualified. They sent a group of nine of us on a train to California. We had a sleeper car so it was quite comfortable.
My 9 weeks of basic training took place at Pleasanton Air Force Base which is just southeast of Oakland, CA. They showed us how to march and how to fire a carbine. They had each of us take a series of tests. I did well on the nine categories of subjects. They needed a group of Airmen to start 20 weeks training for basic electronics followed by 17 weeks of the E-4, 5, and 6 radar set. This training took place at Lowry Air Force near Denver, CO. I understood the subject material and did well on the tests. They sent me to Grandview Air Force Base just south of Kansas City for about two years. I repaired the E-4 radar set in the F86D Sabre Jet. This F86D did not have machine guns installed but was to be used to find and zero in on enemy bombers using the radar set and shoot them down using rockets (located in a belly pod).
While stationed at Lowry AFB they were making the movie “The Glen Miller Story” in Denver. They issued many of us WWII uniforms and had us march in a parade around the runway on a hot sunny day. The band was playing traditional old marches and the troops marched very poorly. Glen Miller ran from the reviewing stand through the formations to the band and switched the music to new upbeat marches. The troops then marched very precisely. The movie editors cleverly switched the scenes placing the marching late on the hot day when we were marching poorly to the earlier scene. Then, they had the early scenes when we were marching precisely to the part when the band started to playing the new upbeat marches.
In another scene, the Glen Miller band was playing in front of a hospital in England. I was part of the patients watching. Suddenly, a German buzz bomb came our way. The patients all scattered under the trees nearby. The band continued to play. After the bomb landed behind the hospital, the patients all came back and clapped and cheered the band for being so brave. I think Jimmy Stewart and June Allison and I did a nice job in making that movie.
An enjoyable part of my stay in Kansas City was that George Hilby, a neighbor from St. Joseph Ridge, was stationed there and he had a black Studebaker convertible. He had met a group of student nurses in Kansas City, KS. He was going with Loretta and I started going with Alice. George’s brother, Walter, was in the Army and was stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas about an hour west of Kansas City. Walter started going with Helen. We spent many of our weekends with the nurses. I purchased my first car in Kansas City. I paid $450 for a 1950 green Ford. Alice and I did take a weekend trip to Wisconsin to visit my family.
F86D Sabre Jet Airman Bob Bina on a F86D
In late 1955 the Air Force assigned me to Okinawa. Prior to my trip to Okinawa, I was home on a 30-day leave. Our neighbors’, Lloyd and Margie Lueck, had David, their third child. They were having their wedding party attendees as godparents. The plan was for cousin, Walter Hilby, and Garnet Lueck (Lloyd’s sister) as David’s godparents. Walter was asked to be David’s godfather but he was still in the Army in Kansas and could not get time off. Lloyd and Margie asked me, a neighbor, to be the godfather. Garnet was the godmother. You can therefore say we met in church. Garnet and I planned to meet at the Log Cabin in Bangor on the following Wednesday evening where there was to be a wedding dance. We met there and danced. I took her home after the dance. We then had our first date the next Saturday evening. We again went to a dance at the Log Cabin. The next day, which was Sunday, I left for Okinawa. On the train trip to CA, I stopped in Kansas City to say goodbye to Alice. I wrote to Garnet signed “with love” from California. When she opened the letter she could not figure out who Bob Bina was. She had heard that I had a girlfriend in Kansas City who had already met my parents. We did write to each other that year. I served about a year at Naha Air Force Base in Okinawa.
On the trip to Okinawa, the troop ship took two weeks to travel from San Francisco to Japan and Okinawa. The ship stopped for a Sunday in Hawaii. I took a military bus trip to see the sites around Honolulu. The return trip from Okinawa in 1956 on another troop ship took seventeen days.
While in Okinawa, I took a week trip to Japan to visit my brother, Donnie. Donnie was stationed at an Army base near Tokyo. I was planning to fly up and back but there was a parachute problem at the time. I took a Japanese passenger ship up. Donnie and I took a two-day trip to a resort in the mountains. The parachute problem was fixed for my return trip.
MSOE SCHOOL DAYS
I returned home from the Air Force at midnight on Christmas Eve 1956. Garnet and her parents met me at the La Crosse train station. We all went to midnight mass at St. Joseph Ridge church and then we visited at home with my parents. I traveled to Madison mid-January 1957 for my honorable discharge. I did not have a plan for employment or school. I then discovered that Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) had a course in electronics much like I had in the Air Force. I started school at MSOE in April 1957 and graduated in March 1960 with a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering. My housing for the first three months was renting a room on 27th Street just south of North Avenue.
Garnet and I were married at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Sparta June 26, 1957. We had a luncheon and afternoon reception and dinner in the church basement. We ended the great day with a wedding dance at the Avalon ballroom in La Crosse. The Edgar Wuensch Old Time Orchestra played. We had a two night honeymoon in a motel in La Crescent, MN. We drove to Milwaukee to our first apartment at 26th and Vine (years later we found that they had torn down that house and built a new one). Garnet transferred from Thorp Finance in Sparta to Thorp Finance in Milwaukee located on Fond du Lac Avenue just north of Capitol Drive. Tim was born June 12, 1958. A lady two houses away was the babysitter for Tim. We later moved to an upstairs apartment on 28th Street just south of Lisbon Ave.
The tuition for MSOE was paid for by my military benefits. Garnet worked for Thorp Finance which paid for our expenses. I had to pay for my books. When our son (Tim) was born, the military gave us an additional payment. This helped pay for his child care while Garnet worked to support us.
June 26, 1957 MSOE
MSOE was on the quarter system. We had eleven weeks of classes, then final tests Monday through Wednesday of the twelfth week. The remainder of the week and the following week were free. After the first four quarters, I was in the honors group since a lot of the subject material was similar to what I had while I was in the Air Force. My later grades, however, did slip a little. My initial intention was to graduate as an electronic technician which was a six quarter (two-year) plan. At the end of four quarters, I needed to decide to continue on the technician plan or to switch to become an Electrical Engineer which would be a twelve quarter (four-year) plan. With the encouragement of Philip Fisher, our neighbor, I decided to go on with the Engineer program. Phillip had graduated from MSOE and was working at General Electric in Milwaukee.
WORKING AT UNIVAC/UNISYS
On the night of my graduation from MSOE, I flew to St. Paul to interview with UNIVAC. I talked to several people in the Tele-Control Department. One of the interviewers was Roy McArdell. Roy had graduated from MSOE then stayed for a year or two to teach there. Roy was my instructor for one of my electronic classes. They made me an offer which I accepted. Garnet, Tim and I drove to St. Paul after my graduation. We found a house to rent at 244 9th Ave. So. in So. St. Paul. Garnet transferred from Thorp Finance in Milwaukee to Thorp Finance in So. St. Paul. Our house was about ten miles from UNIVAC.
I started work in Tele-Control in Plant 1 April 4, 1960. My initial job was responsible for the wire tabs on the UNIVAC 490 computer. The advantage for the 490 was that it contained an External Specified Index feature which allowed many telephone and telegraph lines to directly access memory. The 490 could than communicate directly with many on-line terminals such as airline terminals. The first installation was at Eastern Airlines in Charlotte, NC.
In 1961, we looked around the St. Paul area at housing developments. We decided to buy a house in the South Grove development south of So. St. Paul. The house at 473 David Ave. had the basement in and was capped. We picked out various features including adding a two car garage. The purchase price was $21,950. A number of years later the county standardized the street names and numbers so our house was renumbered 7130 Carmen Ave.
Julie was born Dec. 25, 1962. In high school, she enjoyed being in the Simley High School Spartanette dance line. As a senior, the group won the State Championship. She married Dan Franklin in 1992. Their four children are Mary, John, Ken and George. Dan worked in software development at UNISYS and later at Symantec. Julie worked at the computer help desk at UNISYS and later at United Health Insurance Co.
Garnet was planning to buy a piano soon after we moved to Minnesota. I looked in the St. Paul phone booked and called my cousin George Bina for his advice. He was a professional musician in the Twin Cities. He invited us over for the evening. As soon as we walked in they informed us that we were not related since we were from WI and they had originated from North Dakota. We did enjoy a nice evening. The next week I called my cousin George Bina in the Minneapolis phone book. He invited us to a night club where is was playing a violin in a trio. We talked and he advised us to see his friend at Schmitt Music. We did purchase a piano there and thought that we got a good deal.
One day in the fall 1964 some co-workers and myself were having lunch in the cafeteria with our Director, Glen Turner. He mentioned that there was going to be a beginners’ square dance that evening. The beginners were about half-way (10 weeks) through lessons and the regular dancers were invited to help out that evening. Garnet and I had square danced a few times several years prior to this. We attended and did very well. The beginners thought we were regulars since they hadn’t seen us before. The regulars thought we were beginners since they had never seen us before. All went well so we joined the beginners group and finished the lesson series. We then joined the Bar Naught Square Dance club in So. St. Paul. We attended our first Minnesota State Convention in Willmar, MN, in June 1965. We have been square dancing ever since.
We danced at Bar Naught every other Friday Evening and shortly became friends with several other couples. We would then meet at one of our friends house after the dance for a couple of hours of drinking, talking and telling jokes. An interesting question came from a neighbor of Larry and Mary Ann Blevins. The neighbor asked why they had all those Doctors visiting at such a late hour? It turns out that each of the dance couples had a black case used to carry liquor. The most fun times was when a group of 4 to 6 couples traveled to a weekend of square dancing. We went to state conventions, national conventions, weekends at Chula Vista Resort near Wisconsin Dells, Chicago or Dayton, OH. The dancing was fun but the after parties in someone’s room was the real fun part. Each couple brought a liquor case and snacks where we talked and told stories and jokes for hours and made friends with dancers from other cities. We would meet up with them also at other out-of-state square dances.
After years of main-stream dancing, we moved up to the higher levels of Advanced and Challenge. There are eight levels of higher dancing. We danced at the C4 level, which is the highest level, for about ten years at both the National Challenge Convention in Virginia Beach and the Canadian Challenge Convention in Hamilton, Ontario. We later fell back to the C3A and C3B levels which we can handle much better.
We built an addition onto our house in 1983 so we could conduct square dance workshops. We buy and play cassette tapes recorded at some dance and help the dancers learn and perform the various calls, concepts and formations.
Mary Anne and Larry Blevins Bob, Dan, Don, Joyce Ann, Jean, Wencel, Marcie
Garnet and Bob Bina
Shirley and Sonny Willenbring
early 1968 a group of five management people left UNIVAC a formed COMTEN, a company that would design a new communication computer. I left UNIVAC in late 1968 and joined COMTEN. I was the manager of the DATRAN project. This was prior to the time when telephone companies could transmit data economically over the voice oriented phone systems. The DATRAN system was to install microwave towers across the US, install a computer and switching office in cities and transmit data. Sam Wyly and his brother, Charles, founders of University Computing Company financed this project. This project required travel to attend meetings, many of them in Falls Church, Va. I was scheduled to present our network at the International Conference on Communications in June 1971 in Montreal, Canada. To prepare for this presentation, I attended a weekly meeting of the Toastmasters for about six months to prepare. The presentation went well to about 350 attendees at the conference. One interesting sideline occurred at a luncheon of the attendees’ wives. They were on a city tour and stopped for lunch. The waitress asked what group this was. Their response was that they were part of the International Switching Conference. The waitress said that she heard of wife switching but didn’t know that there was an International meeting to discuss the subject. After about five years, the DATRAN project was cancelled. I then returned to UNIVAC as a Logic Design group manager.
I started playing golf about mid-1960s. Unisys had leagues that played the St. Paul city courses. After retirement, I played once a week in the summer time with a foursome of friends. We play the courses south and east of the Twin Cities. We play a different course each week.
In 1981 Tim married Wendy Gorr. Young Bob was born Dec. 12, 1981. After their divorce, Tim had full physical custody of young Bob. Wendy then married Kevin Eicher. Ashly was born Dec. 12, 1987. Kevin and Wendy divorced. When Ashly was in the fourth grade, Wendy asked if Garnet and I would raise Ashly. We agreed and Ashly grew up with us like a granddaughter.
Tim graduated from the University of Minnesota as a Civil Engineer. Tim married Bobbi Stegora in 1997. Tim was working for Hypro Corp., which was bought out by Pentair. They transferred him to San Diego, CA. Tim and Bobbi also lived in various states including Texas and North Carolina. He spent three six-month tours in China helping to streamline their manufacturing processes. In 2012, Tim and Bobbi moved back to the Twin Cities and purchased a home in Minneapolis.
Garnet, Julie and I took a three week trip to Europe in 1985. We landed in England and toured London. We took a boat to the mainland, where we took a bus tour visiting 10 more countries in the next 21 days. Cities toured on the trip included; Cologne, Vienna, Venice, Rome, Monte Carlo and Paris.
In September 1986 UNISYS was formed through the merger of the mainframe corporations SPERRY UNIVAC and BURROUGHS, with BURROUGHS buying SPERRY for $4.8 billion. At the time of the merger, UNISYS had approximately 120,000 employees. By 1997, layoffs had reduced world-wide employee count to approximately 30,000.
I spent 36 years in the design and management area starting with computers designed with vacuum tubes, then integrated chips and finally large scale integration. Without military training and military benefits, it is hard to say what kind of job/career I would have had – – but probably not a professional career.
RETIREMENT DAYS
UNISYS offered an early retirement early in 1996. Since I was 61 years old, I accepted and worked through mid-April. They continued to pay my salary through November of that year. By then, I could start collecting social security starting in January 1997; so financially, it all worked out well.
Czechoslovak Genealogy Society International (CGSI) was formed in March 1988. I joined CGSI in 1993 so that I could help research our ancestors. The following year I became their Sales Manager. I purchased books, maps and T-shirts, sent them to customers, and sold the items at meetings and festivals. I turned over that job to Jerry Parupsky in 2002. CGSI has about 2,500 members in the U.S. and several foreign countries. The officers and committee chairs live in the Twin City area.
In 1996, I attended a genealogy conference at the Thunder Bird motel in the Twin Cities. At the conference I witnessed a Slovak genealogy web site presented by Greg Kopchak. I was impressed with the web site content. Soon thereafter, I had a web site up and running for CGSI. I had initial help from Chris Miksanik that had developed the web site for the Czech & Slovak American Genealogy Society of Illinois. I was the webmaster for CGSI until early 2014. During this time, we had several updates. The web site started by using HTML which is a simple software process. When we wanted to sell books, T-shirts, etc. on-line via credit cards, we had a local company rewrite the web site code using Microsoft ASP language. Later when we were required to update our site, we had another local company rewrite the web site code using the Drupal language.
Garnet retired from 3M in August 1996. A week later Garnet, Bobby and I took a two week tour to Germany and the Czech Republic. Since we kept Bobby during the summer months, he got to go with us. Our first stop was in Bonn, Germany. We rented a car and drove to the small villages south of Bonn where the Arenz ancestors lived. We then took a train to Prague. We visited the sites for three days then hired Mirek Koudelka to drive us south to Trebon where our Bina and Novacek ancestors lived. We visited several Bina and Novacek families but did not find any direct relatives. We visited Novosedly where grandfather Thomas Bina was born. We also visited Stara Hlina where grandmother Anna Novacek was born.
3M had a wonderful program for the children of the employees. They worked with the YMCA. Garnet dropped off Bobby at Battle Creek Park near 3M. They had planned activities at the park and at a local YMCA. Garnet picked him up when she was finished work.
Garnet, Ashly and I took a great two week tour of Ireland in 2000. We landed in Shannon. From there we took a bus tour up the west coast of Ireland visiting Galway, and Silgo then through Northern Ireland where we visited Londonderry and Belfast. We continued down the east coast staying in Dublin for two nights. We then traveled across the southern area of Ireland were we visited Wexford, Waterford, Cork, Ring of Kerry, Killarney, Limerick and finally back to Shannon.
Bob Bina, Paul Makousky, Jerre Bobby, Tim, Bobbi, Dan
Richter, and Mary Hart at the Mary, Bob, Garnet, Julie
Sales Table in New Prague, MN Ken, John, George
In January 2002, we took our family for a nine-day vacation to Hawaii. Garnet and I, Ashly, Julie, Dan, Mary, John, Ken, Tim, Bobbi, Bobby and Bobby’s friend, Kevin Graebel. We had a great time. Julie was about 4 months pregnant with George. We rented a Condo on Lahaina Beach in Maui for four days. We celebrated Mary Franklin’s 6th birthday on the beach. A helicopter trip showed the beauty of the island including a giant waterfalls and many hills and valleys. Bobby, Kevin, and I took a bike trip down Haleakala volcano. A tour group took 12 of us in two vans and bikes on a trailer to the top of the volcano. One guide lead us down, showed us the route and controlled the speed down the mountain. We stopped about half-way down for lunch then finished the trip down. Our family then flew to Honolulu for three days where we walked on the Wiki beach and some of us took a boat trip out to the memorial for the USS Arizona.
In 2005 Garnet and I took a trip with about 140 members to a CGSI conference of two days in Bratislava and two days in Prague. A highlight was when we talked to the Trebon archive representative about their records. Dr. Ladena Plucarova’s maiden name that represented the Trebon archive was Bina. We did not find a direct relative connection. After the conference, we again hired Mirek Koudelka to drive us south to Trebon. Mirek and I visited the archive in Trebon where I viewed the actual church record of my grandmother’s baptism record. We again visited a number of possible relatives. We visited the Novacek family that lived at Stara Hlina #8. This is the house that my grandmother, Anna Novacek, lived in prior to her migrating to the US. We later found that we are related to this Novacek family.
In 2008 we traveled to the Barcelona resort south of Cancun, Mexico for a week vacation with Julie and family. It was an all-inclusive resort (lodging, food and drinks were included in the price). We took side trips to go scuba diving and to see the Maya ruins. After the week, Garnet and I took a bus to Belize to visit my cousin, Doug Fox. He is married to Juanita, a local lady. They have a daughter, Caroline. Doug owns a farm where he has lime and lemon trees. They pick limes every six weeks and lemons twice a year. He ships them to Miami where they are distributed throughout the U.S.
Garnet and I have been members of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Inver Grove Heights starting in 1961. We have been part of the Hospitality (Usher) group for a number of years. We have cemetery plots at the St. Patrick’s cemetery located at Rich Valley Blvd and 105th ST. here in IGH. This cemetery is about 5 miles southwest of the current St. Patrick’s Catholic Church and is the site of the original St. Patrick’s church in the 1800s. This original church burnt down.
My professional career gave me and my family a good life. With my UNISYS pension, social security and the money I saved through the IRA savings plan we are living a comfortable life in our retirement years.
In the summer of 2013 we took Mary, John, Ken and George to the Dakota County Fair. It happened to be Military Veterans Day so we all got in free because of my military experience. On the way home, Mary figured that we saved $45 dollars.
On Veterans Day some of the restaurants give the veterans free meals. We enjoy this special attention.