When you think of Bob Morcom’s off-duty activities, you might picture him on skis. After all, Bob has been a professional ski instructor, clinician, and examiner for more than 40 years.
However, instead of schussing his way through retirement, Bob will do a little steering first. One of his immediate post-retirement projects will be to renovate a car he has owned since 1979. The maroon 1978 Saab 99 turbo was the first factory-production turbo-charged engine in the United States, Bob says, and while you wouldn’t want to take it far now, that will change soon.
“It runs but not to the point where you’d want to take it anywhere,” Bob says, who plans to keep it as original as possible.
Bob is retiring this month as a Principal and Senior Civil Engineer for TSP in Rapid City. He joined the firm 29 years ago when it was known as TSP 2 and was starting its civil engineering department in Rapid City. In 1989, Bob was working with Peter Kliewet & Sons on a project outside of Cheyenne, WY, when Del Acker and Dan Allen invited him to join their firm.
“At that time, Sheridan had the only civil engineering company, and we wanted to expand civil engineering to Rapid City,” Bob says. “Somehow they go my name. And absolutely I jumped at it. I wanted to get back to the (Black) Hills.”
Bob was raised in Lead, where his father ran a clothing store with his brothers and uncle, but had started his education in civil engineering. An uncle also was a civil engineer, and he also was influenced by the presence of the engineers who lived in Lead and worked for the Homestake Gold Mine. Bob saw civil engineering as a profession where he would be offered much variety and be able to be outdoors.
The profession has lived up to his expectations.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a boring day in my life,” Bob says. “Every day there was always something different.”
His work always has been a team effort, Bob says. “You get a sort of pride you’re able to work with a team or direct a team and get something completed,” he says. “When I look at (completed) projects, I like to say we did it, not just one person.”
Bob and his wife, Cathy, live west of Spearfish, between that town and Whitewood. He says it puts them 15 minutes from everywhere – her physical therapy business in Spearfish, golfing, their cabin, and his job in Rapid City. (OK, claiming he can travel from home to work in 15 minutes is fudging it quite a bit.) Bob does, however, have the advantage of confronting only one stoplight on the 40 miles to work.
“I drive (by) a couple stop signs, go onto the interstate, and drive 40 miles until I get to the office,” Bob says.
At last weekend’s TSP Annual Meeting, Bob shared some statistics from his 23 years of commuting to work from outside Rapid City. He put in more than 550,000 miles, filled his vehicles with more than 37,000 gallons of gas, and personally consumed more than 860 gallons of coffee and assorted other drinks.
A graduate of South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and the University of Wyoming, Bob met his wife after returning to the Rapid City area. He was working on the Deadwood Main Street project when he took time to attend a social gathering at the Franklin Hotel there. Cathy’s older brother and Bob had played football against each other when Lead High School competed against Deadwood. The couple will celebrate their 25th anniversary later this year.
By that time Bob will have eased into retirement, doing a lot of biking, golfing, and some traveling. He will leave with the satisfaction of knowing the client always came first.
“It’s always been really client/relationship-based,” Bob says. “I really like to solve problems for the client. That’s part of the whole engineering idea, always solving problems.”