Friends and family members will gather at Harvester Community Church in Land O’ Lakes on June 22 for a memorial service for Walter Robert Seitz.
He was known far and wide simply as “Bob” Seitz.
Seitz was born on Oct. 9, 1930, in Rochester, New York, and passed away on March 20 at 93 years of age.
While in the service, Seitz was the recipient of the Navy Presidential Unit Citation and ribbons for National Defense Service, Korean Service and the United Nations Ribbon Duty Stations/Ships, and was a member of Marine Forever Detachment #1440 of the Marine Corps League based in Land O’ Lakes from 2017 to 2024.
But he is well-known for much more besides his military service.
Seitz was an author, artist and actor, and one of the most productive people who lived in the Tampa Bay area.
He began writing a novel in January 1987 called “Nora,” following visits with his wife, Dorothy “Dot” Seitz, to Cedar Key in 1986 and 1988 — the novel takes place in a thinly disguised setting of Cedar Key. It languished on his computer for 15 years before being published in 2012.
Four more of his novels were published between 2018 and 2020. That was a time when he went on a writing spree, he said in “Bob’s One Man’s Journey,” a film he produced and narrated that provided information about 90 years of his life, that was shared on YouTube.
Those novels were “Return to Morgantown,” a sequel to “Nora;” “Good Company,” which was set in the Great Smokey Mountains, one of his favorite places to visit; “And it Came to This,” an account of the rise of Nazi Germany; and “Lucky,” about someone returning from World War II to find his niche in life.
He did a sketch of a tree while he was in his teens and it remains framed and on display in Villa M. Ray’s home in the community of Weymouth in Pasco County.
Ray, who is a widow, became one of Seitz’s closest friends nearly four years after Dot, his wife of 55 years, passed away on July 31, 2006.
The Seitzes had moved from Tampa to Weymouth in 2003.
“He was an amazing man who was a thinker and a creator,” Ray said.
He made his debut as an actor while he attended Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
He portrayed a woman in a skit put on by an all-male cast of university students. Men played the roles of both men and women in the annual play. He received a standing ovation after his performance, which was the only one he ever had he said in “Bob’s One Man’s Journey.”
He also performed in two large productions at the Hollywood Little Theater in Hollywood, Florida. This was while he and Dot lived nearby in Hallandale, now known as Hallandale Beach. He said on YouTube that he decided to not pursue acting any further because of the amount of time and memorization that was required to do so.
Seitz put the Bachelor of Science degree he had earned at Wharton to good use for several years after having been discharged from the Marine Corps.
He worked for Travelers Insurance for seven years, first in Miami, and then in Tampa. He received a significant amount of training through trips to Travelers home office in Hartford, Connecticut, that resulted in him assisting other agents in making sales.
“I had to be the expert, so to speak, in all our products,” Seitz said in his film. Neither he nor his wife was especially happy being transferred to Tampa, but it was something that had to be done, Seitz said.
Seitz left Travelers in April 1963 and began working for IBM as a salesman. After a short time, he determined he wasn’t good as a salesman, but he was introduced to computer programming — something he was good at and he enjoyed.
In January 1965, he began working for the First Federal Savings & Loan Association of Tampa as its data processing manager. He helped them incorporate computing into their work and wrote the programs they used. He was promoted twice at First Federal — in March 1967 as vice president and in October 1975 as senior vice president.
In 1969 he was placed in charge of marketing for First Federal, responsible for being the spokesman for advertising and promotions, and personally read the advertisements on both radio and television.
“That went on for about four years. And I became well-known in downtown Tampa. Everyone knew me as ‘Bob the TV guy’ when I walked the streets,’” Seitz said.
One of his biggest accomplishments while at First Federal was to help that financial institution become the first in the state to have an ATM.
“It was a great success,” said Seitz.
Savings and loans large and small were starting to fail in large numbers in the early 1980s when interest rates skyrocketed, so he left First Federal in March 1982.
He became self-employed as a data processing consultant and remained so until his retirement in March 1996. He wrote systems for several small businesses that used IBM personal computers. Seitz said his largest project was to build an entire corporate income tax package that consisted of more than 100 programs all tied together.
In April 2003, he and Dot moved to the community of Weymouth in Pasco County. While living there he served as president of the homeowners association for three different terms.
His was “a life well-lived,” Ray said.
Seitz’s survivors include his son, Gregory Seitz, granddaughter Amethyst Seitz, and great grandchildren Mavrik Coleman and Nora Coleman.
Published May 29, 2024