Bob Bracewell, 88: Had uncanny knack for fixing things

The first 20 years of Bob Bracewell's life weren't easy, growing up the oldest child of an Alabama tenant farmer and itinerant preacher and never getting past the seventh grade. Yet thanks to a talent for fixing things and a never-say-quit work ethic, he managed to provide a comfortable life for his family and become a go-to man offering assistance to family, friends and his church.

"Dad didn't realize there was a Depression going on during the 1930s. He had lived in poverty from the time he was born in 1922," said his son, Morgan County Probate Judge Michael Bracewell of Madison.

Early in life, Mr. Bracewell began helping in the fields, steering a plow behind the family's cantankerous mule Minnie and picking cotton. "Years later, Dad would say his back would start to hurt every time he passed by a cotton field," his son said.

When his father was around 9 years old, he took a discarded bicycle with ruined tires, cut up strips of inner tubes and tied them around the rims and made the bike ride-able -- one of the first of his many fix-it projects, his son said.

World War II brought Mr. Bracewell to metro Atlanta, indirectly. While training as an infantryman, he developed problems with his ankles. Instead of being dismissed from the service, he had his ankles corrected surgically and subsequently was assigned as a medical technician at Lawson General Hospital, a military facility established in 1942 in Chamblee.

The Lawson hospital was noted for teaching military amputees -- including Harold Russell, the Academy Award-winning supporting actor in "The Best Years of Our Lives" -- how to use prosthetic limbs. Mr. Bracewell's assignment was to teach blinded servicemen to master everyday tasks like eating. He also gave wounded soldiers "thrilling rides" up and down the corridors on their gurneys or in their wheelchairs, his son said.

Once a civilian again, Mr. Bracewell worked in Atlanta for a ball bearing manufacturer and for Skil Corp.'s power tool facility, but the majority of his career was spent at General Motors' Lakewood plant. As chief equipment troubleshooter there, he repaired and maintained hydraulic tools used on the assembly line.

"I recall Dad won an award and a bonus for an idea he had for improving assembly-line efficiency," his son said. "He had an uncanny knack for diagnosing problems with things mechanical, electrical or whatever, and then making the fixes."

Bobby Frederick Bracewell, 88, of Mableton, died Friday of lung cancer at Wellstar Hospice in Austell. His funeral will be at 11 a.m. Monday at Davis Struempf Funeral Home in Austell with interment to follow in West Family Cemetery in Fayetteville.

Mr. Bracewell was equally busy with fix-it projects at home. "The family had a saying: ‘Sara (his late wife of 60 years) would point, and Bob would do,'" said his daughter-in-law, Ruth Bracewell. For example, Mr. Bracewell converted a storeroom into a full bathroom and moved a stairwell from one side of their house to the other.

"Daddy never had fancy or new tools," said his daughter, Janice Fuller of Marietta. "He often used saved scraps and everyday household items that were stored in the garage in a haphazard organization system that only he understood. He saved everything -- jars, paper rolls, nails, bolts, strings."

Mr. Bracewell was the person she sought out for advice and his was the first number to call when her children were sick, she said. "Just like he stood by our mother during her year-long struggle with cancer, he was there for other family members and friends, whether they were hospitalized overnight or for an extended stay."