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After a lifetime of Antarctic expeditions, international travel and philanthropy, Woodside resident Robert Flint is best remembered in the small town as a pillar of the community. Flint died at age 86 on May 28 after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease.
Born on April 4, 1940, in Wilmington, Delaware, Flint graduated from Yale University in 1962 and later made his way to California to work in electrical engineering at Stanford University. The Golden State became the place where he found opportunity, love and community.
His family described him as intellectual, adventurous, supportive and goofy, with a “British sense of humor.”
Among his worldwide adventures, Flint held a special place in his heart for Antarctica, a continent he returned to many times for his research with Stanford University. The place was like his “first love,” said his daughter Katie Flint.
Her father had the opportunity to travel to the icy south after he applied to a job posting on a bulletin board seeking someone to “maintain complex electromechanical systems in Antarctica, immediately,” according to his family.
In 1963, Flint committed to spending a year at Byrd Station in central Antarctica. He was hired to make measurements on a geophysical phenomenon called whistlers, radio waves produced by lightning.
“The reason it’s called the whistler is that zap will turn into a whistling sound,” said Flint in an interview he did with his daughter Katie in 2012. “By measuring these whistlers at their frequency, you can tell what is going on at the top of the magnetic line, what the particle densities are, so it turns out to be a very interesting tool for studying the magnetosphere.”
He also has a mountain in West Antarctica named after him — Mount Flint.
Both Katie and her mother Susan Flint joked that the work was very technical and neither of them really understood what he was doing on his yearlong expeditions.
Susan was a medical research technologist at Stanford when she met Robert on a blind date after he returned from his second trip to Antarctica in 1967. The couple got married in 1971 and raised their family in Woodside.
In between Robert’s travels, he maintained a strong relationship with his hometown through his involvement with the Woodside Community Foundation and Woodside Elementary School District board. He also served on the Sierra Club Foundation board for 16 years.
Flint was an important figure in driving the renovation of Folger Stable, Woodside Community Theatre productions, the creation of the Woodside Community Museum and the Barkley Field project that established Woodside’s first municipal park.
“He loved to work with people in the community and the community always wanted the help,” said Susan. “He was a professional volunteer. He could get along with anybody.”
She said her husband’s optimistic spirit and warm personality made for a “very easy, loving life.” He didn’t dwell on negativity, Susan added, even after spending months in Antarctica’s freezing temperatures and experiencing near death incidents during his travels.
Katie said her fondest memories of her father always involve the outdoors, including a backpacking trip they took to Desolation Wilderness in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Her father taught her to appreciate the natural world, inspiring her to become a conservationist, which has become the main pillar in her adult life, she said,
He also set an example on what it looked like to be an active community member.
“He knew a lot of people in town and used the time where he wasn’t in Antarctica doing something community-based,” Katie said. “That did influence me to really want to make sure that wherever I’ve ended up, I’ve been involved in the community.”
Aside from his professional contributions to science and Woodside, Robert enjoyed opera, hosting dinner parties and speaking Russian, which he learned from working with Russian researchers in Antarctica.
In 2018, Robert was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and slowly began to show symptoms, said Katie. Even through his health struggles, he remained positive and thoughtful to those around him, she added.
“(His caregiver) Lupe would say he was the best patient ever. He never complained, he was very sweet and not combative,” Katie said. “He was always a sweet person, so it made sense even when he was in the deepest throes of Parkinson’s, he was still a kind individual.”
Susan told The Almanac that she hopes her husband is remembered as “as a warm-hearted person who cared deeply about his family, about serving his community, and carried a deep love for the natural world.”
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. on Sunday, July 26, at Woodside’s Town Hall, 2955 Woodside Road.
