Robert (Bob) Vance Williams, Jr., a fifth-generation native of Hendersonville, NC, passed away peacefully at his home on April 4, 2025, with family at his side. He was the son of Robert Vance Williams, Sr., of Spartanburg, SC, and Anne Williams of Hendersonville, both now deceased. He was also preceded in death by his only sibling, James Wiley Williams, a Hendersonville native and former U. S. Army Captain and helicopter pilot. With Colleen Murphy, his wife since 1998, Bob had resided in Brevard, NC, for over 20 years.

As a young man, Bob was active in sports and student activities at Hendersonville High School, and after serving in the Army Air Corps from October 1944 thru September 1946, he was employed by Hendersonville's Boyd Pontiac-Cadillac Company, then Cranston Print Works. A year before moving to Atlanta, GA, in 1951 to join the Lockheed-Georgia Company in nearby Marietta, Bob married the first North Carolina Apple Festival Queen, the late Joan Sample, daughter of the late Dr. Robert C. Sample, who practiced medicine in Henderson County for more than 30 years.

Bob began a 39-year career with the Lockheed Aircraft Company as an assembly-line installer at the Marietta, GA, aircraft-manufacturing plant during the company's modification of B-29 Super Fortress bombers for the Korean conflict. Following five years as an assembly-line supervisor and assistant foreman there building B-47 Stratojet bombers for the Cold War and C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft for the U. S. Air Force, he performed assignments in the company's project coordination, design-change control and program management functions, which he followed throughout the remainder of his career. At the Georgia plant, he served seven years as chief project coordinator for the C-130 and C-141 Starlifter programs, becoming director of Master Scheduling in 1967. He later served as C-141 deputy program manager before transferring in 1973 to the L-1011 TriStar commercial passenger-transport project office at Lockheed's aircraft plants in Burbank and Palmdale, CA.

Serving five years as program manager of the L-1011 TriStar program, he was appointed general manager of the company's commercial programs, in 1979. Following completion of L-1011 production in 1984, Bob joined the office of Lockheed's corporate head of operations in Calabasas, CA, and returned to the Georgia operation, performing as deputy general manager of that plant until his retirement in 1990.

"Airplanes were a part of my father's life, literally throughout," according to his daughter, the late Joan Williams Ott who died of Alzheimer's disease in 2024. "My grandmother said that when Dad was one-year old, she carried him aboard a barnstorming Ford TriMotor airplane for a scenic ride over the Hendersonville area." He earned his pilot's license at Oscar Meyer's grass-runway airport in Hendersonville while attending high school and in 1944 joined the Army Air Corps Enlisted Reserve, serving as a radio operator in the Army Airways Communications System.

While at Lockheed, Mr. Williams completed the Executive Development Program at Cornell University's Graduate School of Business and Administration. Coordinating with the company's commercial-airline and military customers during his career. he traveled extensively, circling the globe on several occasions including a stint as director to plan and lead a 36-day flight - demonstration in an L-1011 TriStar. Shortly following retirement from Lockheed in 1990, and years before the introduction of social media, Mr. Williams founded and for eleven years coordinated an e-mail network among more than 2000 Lockheed retirees residing throughout the world, composing and distributing a bimonthly electronic newsletter reporting aerospace and defense current events.

In addition to Colleen, who resides in Brevard, North Carolina, Bob is survived by daughter Laura W. Brown of Marietta, GA; his son, Robert Scott Williams, of Washington, D.C. and New York City; two grandchildren, Amanda B. Dennis and her brother, Kyle Chandler Brown; and two great-grandchildren, Ava Rose Dennis and Reese Fallon Brown, all residing in Georgia.

Online condolences may be left at www.moodyconnollyfuneralhome.com .

Moody Connolly Funeral Home is caring for the family.