Robert H. Boon, M.D., 96, of Huntsville passed away Saturday. Robert was born on June 21, 1921, in Marianna, Arkansas, the only child of Robert Marshall Boon and Ada Wyman Boon. He graduated from T. A. Futrall High School in Marianna in 1939. As a member of the Arkansas National Guard, he was called to military service after one year of premedical studies at Kemper Military Academy in Boonville, Missouri.
During World War II, Robert served in the U.S. Army Aleutian Campaign with the 206th Coast Artillery in Dutch Harbor and Amchitka, Alaska. After the war, he finished his undergraduate degree at the University of Arkansas and then entered the University of Arkansas School for Medical Sciences, graduating in 1951. He served an internship and one year of residency at the William Crawford Gorgas Hospital in the Panama Canal Zone. He continued residency training at the Menninger Clinic, Topeka, Kansas, at Thayer Hospital, the Veterans Hospital associated with Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and at Kennedy Veterans Administration Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. He was board certified in internal medicine and pulmonary disease. In 1961, he moved to Huntsville, Alabama, to practice at the Huntsville Clinic, where he remained until retirement in 1984.
In 1946, he and Eloise Gray of Hutchinson, Kansas, were married in the First Christian Church of Fayetteville, Arkansas. They celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary on October 11, 2016. Robert and Eloise explored the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the length of the Alcan Highway to the Arctic Circle in their small airplane. But Robert also remained close to the land in Arkansas, where he was the third generation of his family to farm in Lee County in southeast Arkansas. In his retirement years, he also enjoyed gardening in Huntsville.
Survivors include his wife, Eloise Gray Boon; a daughter, Hannah Elise Boon of Huntsville; and a son, Robert Brian Boon and wife, Leesa Ferguson Boon of Mountain View, Arkansas.
The family wishes to extend their thanks to the staff at Magnolia Trace and Hospice Family Care for their many kindnesses.
No services are planned.
Memorials may be made in Robert’s memory to the Community Foundation of Lee County, 130 Robertson Avenue, Marianna, AR 72360.
