Robert Everett achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel and a was awarded a bronze medal in the US military during an era otherwise marred by social change and an African American struggle for equality. The native Floridian passed away quietly on Nov. 10 from complications related to pulmonary disease.

Everett’s daughter Cynthia Everett remembers him most strikingly as a “dependable” man.

Back in the late ‘60s, she recalled, while the family was on vacation, they had boarded a plane to find that one of their assigned seats was taken up by another person. Her father, keepin calm and composed, asked the white man to move, citing the seat number on his ticket. It was unusual, Cynthia said, to see a black man asking a white man to get up and move in those years. Nonetheless, the man complied with Everett’s request and moved.

“There’s always a way to do things: He didn’t yell or scream,” the Pinecrest city attorney said about what’s always stood out in her mind as a paragon of her father’s temperament and attitude. “He was always there when I needed him.”

Everett was born and raised in Cocoa, FL on Feb. 22, 1931. Orphaned early, Everett was mostly cared for by a godmother. He spent his summers in New York with his aunt and uncle. Everett graduated from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) in 1953 with a degree in history and entered the military with the rank of second lieutenant, awarded to him by the senior ROTC program at FAMU.

He was stationed all over the continental US and abroad in Germany. His tours took him through Korea and Vietnam from the late ‘50s to the early ‘70s.

In 1960, Everett was given the rank of captain and spent the next four years serving and studying between Korea, Kansas and Germany, but he had been denied twice for a regular army commission, which would have assured him at least 30 years of career service in the military.

Long time friend Al Ferguson, a retired colonel who knew Everett since they were freshmen together at FAMU, said that Everett’s skin color may have played a part in the military’s refusal to accept his application.

“Black officers were denied many things that a white officer would get. Segregation played a hell of a lot in denying us as black offciers things we deserved,” Ferguson said. “We could not just be ‘good,’ we had to be ‘better than.’

Despite this, Everett’s commitment to the military and constant education opened doors for him. In an undated letter from Brigadier General George Carver that assigned Everett to Oklahoma in 1962, the general urged him to reapply for a regular military commission.

“Your failure to be selected on your previous applications does not mean that you lack suitable qualifications,” Carver wrote. “I am sure that your chances are now better than when you last applied in 1958.”

Ferguson and Everett would later start the FAMU Military Officers Association of Southeast Florida, both of them retirees in Miami. The organization started with 20 FAMU ROTC graduates who had served at least two years in active duty. Today, there are five left. All of them attended Everett’s memorial service.

Everett received a bronze star medal of honor for his year’s duty in Vietnam from Oct. 1970 to Oct. 1971 as an action officer in the Investigation and Complaint Division, where he, according to the certificate, “gave his unselfish, wholehearted attention to the complaints of individuals, to allegations of irregularities within the command, and to thorough and constructive investigation of matters of great importance to the commander.” In 1975, he was awarded a meritorious service medal for his 22 years of service.