Dear Members of the Gun Board,
For almost a decade you've seen a cat with a bomb run across your screen inspiring you to think outside the box to solve your casting, loading, and reloading questions. He was never right to the point, and personally speaking as his son, he didn't just treat only you that way.
Felix the Cat -FMR (or Felix Monroe Robbins III) taught most people this way. He loved to inspire people to do things on their own giving them just the right amount of data to spark your interest, but only if you were truly interested in what he had to say. He never handed out advice directly, but it was always free. He loved to share his knowledge of any topic to those he cared for.
The only secrets he kept was information that one didn't inquire about as he rarely freely shared unless asked.
Many of you have wondered who he was and how he got so good at what he did. Frankly, he taught himself and asked others has he has taught many of you (his science and analytics background helped too). Here's a brief history of the things he did.
Dad was on the shooting team at the University of Missouri, Rolla campus c 1960 or 1961. He then moved to Kansas City campus to pursue his degree in Electrical Engineering, but his shooting story doesn't include only him.
He met his wife, Pat at a fraternity block party in 1962, not the kind you think of today with a bunch of drunken scantily clad folks stumbling around, but one that was sanctioned by the university where they closed down the block to traffic and set up stages with live bands of the time. After meeting Pat, he convinced her to come back to his home of New Madrid, MO, where he had set up 5 coke bottles along a fence row.
While still in the car, he handed my mother a 30-06 (Browning I believe) and briefly taught my mom the basics of shooting. After a brief introduction "hold this here, line this up, look down the sites like so, breathe, and gently squeeze the trigger," mom fired off her first shot. The bottle broke. "Try the next one" he said, slightly farther away, she hit that one, and the other 3. 5 for 5 for a first time shooter! She handed the gun back to him and said "your turn!" He huffed and puffed and muttered under his breath they should get back for dinner. He then mentioned she should join the rifle team. While at Mizzou (Columbia campus), Pat accomplished the following:
• Varsity letter for the 1963-64 season (first woman to receive such)
• National Rifle Association intercollegiate medal - "High Lady" 1064
• Big Eight Championship Tournament team - 3rd place medal
• National Rifle Association intercollegiate league team - 2nd place medal
To this day, Pat's medals are still on the wall of Felix's reloading room, inspiring all of us to "make every shot count." Needless to say, I'm still not as good as mom, so I never talked back to her much!
Felix and Pat graduated from Mizzou in 1964 with Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Felix worked in the department that did highway lighting and design at Howard, Needles, Tammen & Bergendoff Consulting Engineers (aka "HNTB") in approx. 1966. If you ever drive thru downtown Kansas City and the surrounding area at night, think of Felix as he designed the spacing and power required to light the city evenly.
He then worked full time at Booze-Allen Applied Research in approx. 1969-1970. Pat also worked there part-time for a few months doing war-game computer programming.
Pat and Felix then moved to Pratt & Whitney Aircraft (Hartford, CT) paid all of our tuition for M.S. degrees in Computer Science in 1973-1975. They were the first married couple to earn Master of Science degrees together at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI).
They moved to CT in 1972 when Pratt & Whitney Aircraft hired both of us to work in the computer programming department and lived there until 1976.
It was in CT where he shot at the Colt shooting range from time to time and met a gentleman who was a BR shooter. This fella had a gun that "wasnt quite built right" so it was never a match winner. The guy sold it to Felix so he could get a different one. He had been doing some reloading for other rifles prior to this, but got more serious about it when he got this bench rifle. He began studying precision and how cartridges work, the types of powder, the aerodynamics of the loads, the weight etc. He never professionally competed as he knew his gun was never at par with the other BR guys, but he could still hit a half floating shotgun shell at 200-300 yards every time without missing a shot (I witnessed this on many occasions when I was younger). After all, it was Pat that could truly outshoot him when she wanted to! She was the one who enjoyed the competitive nature of shooting while Felix would rather shoot the breeze with the guys and talk ammo.
Felix and Pat moved to Houston and worked primarily at Brown and Root (contractor), Siescom Delta where he did seismic analysis, and also a job at a potato chip packaging company doing logic design approximately summer of 1977. This company designed the systems that vibrate the perfect amount of chips by weight in each bag essentially being responsible for the air that's in your nachos today! As a perfectionist, he hated that the machine kept shutting down, so he and Pat sat down one weekend and designed a system that wouldn't break. Shortly after, that company closed its doors in CT as there was not a need for many employees in the area since they no longer had to fix their machines.
Here Felix spent a lot of time shooting at Southwest Rifle Range where he met a couple of guys from ZZ-Top. Pat nor I can confirm whether he was one of the shooters during the Houston Warehouse Project during this time, however he was an avid reader of Precision Shooting Magazine that reported back many findings through the years following. He also graced the cover (below) with his son Tommy.
He then moved to Huntsville, AL in approx. 1986 where he worked for the NASA contractor and in 1988 he moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas where he worked for Baldor Electric until his retirement in 2002.
During this time, he inspired Tommy (his oldest living son) to create the original website Cast Pics which eventually became the Cast Boolits site.
Another famous feat Felix mastered was lube. This didn't come to him over night; I spent many years looking for the crayons that disappeared from my box and found various blotches of sticky stuff in his work bench until he finally created the famous "Felix Lube" recipe during his retirement years. Felix never wanted to capitalize on his work as he'd rather share the recipe with you all and get your feedback. He took great pride in seeing how people used his lube.
During his retirement years, he spent most of his days around the house, but primarily moderating this board. He considered you a family and spoke highly of the collective that had come together. He often said that "I have friends all over whom I've never met." I didn't really believe him until I personally met some of the folks on the board. Anthony B, Sundog, and Good Steel, became part of our family throughout the years. I then began to realize what a great bunch of folks this board is comprised of.
Dad loved responding and teaching, especially in his final years as he began to weaken so much that he rarely went to the river bottoms with me and my friends. That didn't stop him though, he'd question us how the loads shot and helped us tinker with them until we got them right. When we reported the load didn't shoot well, he's stare at us blankly for a moment and after that awkward moment of silence, he say "the load didn't, or you didn't?" and we'd confess and he'd shake his head but always with a friendly smirk.
The last time Felix was on the range, we were shooting, lever and bolt, (he wasn't much a fan of black guns because they threw his brass and he had to bend over and pick them up, but I did convince him an AR-15 can be accurate) a friend of mine was complaining he couldn't free hand a clay target at 100 yards and complained about the load. Weak and 71 years old, he grabbed the iron sighted rifle (I can't remember which now) and took aim. After complaining that his eyes weren't as good as ours, he squeezed the trigger, the clay broke, and he handed the rifle back with that smirk he always had. "Gotta learn how to shoot" he loudly stated as he strolled back to the car to take a break.
I'll always keep that memory with me as I squeeze the trigger, along with the memories he's shared with all of you. He loved you like family, and during his final hours, he cried when we read your responses to his farewell.
As for me, I only have a few posts on this board as I didn't need to seek much guidance outside of Felix, although I did surf the board from time to time. Felix taught me well, although my specialty is not really reloading, it's in factory ammunition supply/demand. I plan to be more active in the future and carry on my father's legacy (or at least try).
Our family wasn't alone as we had friends and family with us, but also all of you. Felix (and all of us) had great comfort in that.
On behalf of the Robbins Family, THANK YOU for your support and your kind words. Felix is laid to rest now, but his memory and your kind words will live on forever.
God Bless All of You.
-Nicholas
p.s. Dad's secret chili recipe: It's really Pat's she was the one who won all the Baldor Chili contests, they even started putting her name on the awards! Felix and Pat would make chili at home and after eating it for several days, they noticed the last bowl always tasted the best. Here's the secret- keep it simple, I can outline a basic mixture if you like, but the trick is to make it and then refrigerate it stirring it and heating it up every day or two. After 3-4 days, the flavors will blend and you'll be surprised!
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