Anyone who ran into Robert "Bob" Oliveira in the elevator of his Minneapolis apartment building would be greeted by a warm hello and smiling introduction.
"Every time the elevator door would open he'd say, 'Hi, my name is Bob. What's yours?'" said Dee Oliveira, his wife. She described her husband as an optimistic and extroverted person who embodied the idea of "work hard, play hard."
Bob Oliveira, whose hard work led to advancements in technology for people with hearing loss, died Sept. 5 due to complications from pulmonary fibrosis and rheumatoid arthritis. He was 79.
He was born in New Bedford, Mass., a city known for its whaling industry and population of Portuguese immigrants. His father, Sinval, was Portuguese, but Oliveira could never speak the language so well, his wife said.
Instead, he had a particular interest in science that followed him from his youth into the rest of his life. When Oliveira was young, a family member gifted him a chemistry set, his wife said, and he was always conducting his own experiments and asking questions.
His niece Elisabeth Young-Isebrand and her husband Scott Isebrand recalled Oliveira telling them stories of almost setting his house on fire in his childhood while conducting experiments.
That early curiosity led Bob to UMass, where he studied chemistry and met his future wife. Dee said they first noticed each other while in line for the water fountain, or "bubbler," as Bob called it.
They moved together to different parts of the country while Oliveira got his Ph.D. and continued his research. In 1972, he got a job at 3M, and the couple settled in Minnesota.
