We are absolutely devastated to share with you all that we lost a wonderful friend and one of our champions today. Robert (Bob) Alvarez has passed away. We don’t have enough space in this post to begin to talk about all the ways he supported not just the STL radioactive waste issues, but communities as well. Bob worked so hard for the past two years on RECA with us all and worked with so many Senate offices to get it added into a vehicle. He helped many of us understand the science and along with Kay Drey, made himself always available. From the moment we met him and his sweet wife Kitty, he made us all part of his family.
God speed Bob and Kitty! You both changed the world and you left it and us better for it! 
– Just Moms STL
A Reflection on a Remarkable Life by Amber N. Alavarez Torgerson
It’s with a sad heart I have to report my dad’s passing, July 1, 2025.
My dad was born into a Spanish immigrant family. His dad, Florindo (Floyd) arrived in the US at age 13 from Galicia, Spain, while his mother Angelina (also Americanized to Angela) was born in the U.S. to immigrant parents from Madrid. His parents had an arranged marriage, his mother only 18 when she married “King,” as he was known in the Spanish social club, who was then 35. Spanish was the primary language at home in his youth which had a revolving cast of relatives who stayed with them.
He was a taciturn, introverted child, and a daydreamer. A messy kid compared to his brother Floyd (who I always knew as Jr.) who was 6 years his senior. (While Jr kept his side of the room neat and always dressed smartly, my dad cared very little about his appearance –this remained true throughout his lifetime.) Jr. introduced him to books and they shared a love of comedy –whether it was Laurel & Hardy, Jack Benny, or Ernie Kovacs.
Bob lost his father when he was just 13 and not long after Jr. left for the Marines. In a time when many parents were admonishing their children to turn that rock and roll down, he was blasting classical music (much to his grandfather’s chagrin). He ultimately went to Youngstown State (coincidentally with Ed O’Neill who went in to star in Married with Children and Modern Family) to study music and theater.
Bob’s late teens and early twenties were full of youthful exploits, a multitude of jobs, and nearly as many cars (he once said he never paid more than $100 per car and, when they invariably broke down, he’d just abandon it, take the plate off and get another junker). He and a friend once broke into the Pittsburgh zoo with their dates with the objective of stealing a penguin (the Youngstown mascot bizarrely), only jettisoning the idea once they were in the zoo and they realized they had no additional plan on what to do with the animal (or maybe because they sobered up some). (This is 1 of Evie’s favorite stories which she likes to use for 2 truths and a lie.)
Around the same time he worked as a florist delivery driver (fired for going too fast and ruining the arrangements), an insane asylum (he quit after he was accidentally shot up with a tranquilizer meant for an unruly patient twice his size. He was delivered home and slept for 2 days per my grandmother), and a tv station (where they almost fired him when, as a joke, he filmed a local commercial either all in Polish or Yiddish angering the manager. However, apparently people called in saying how much they liked it and he ultimately kept his job).
For reasons that we’re never clear to me, 3 1/2 years into college, my dad had some sort of crisis. He threw all his awards over a bridge, dropped out of college, and joined the Peace Corp. He left the Peace Corp (he never talked much about it –which for a man who loved to tell stories was unusual) saying simply he was homesick and the South American country where he was sent didn’t want Americans there. Shortly thereafter he was drafted into the Army.
In the Army he muddled through basic training with walking pneumonia. Seeing how well he could shoot (which is to say badly), they made him a medic. Then, because of the vicissitudes of the military, since his last name was at the beginning of the alphabet, he and another soldier got their orders early. He was going to Germany while everyone else was bound for Vietnam.
He largely enjoyed his time in Germany –seeing gunshot wounds, stabbings (he marveled that they got the kitchen staff together for at least 1 stabbing “because they had knives”), drug overdoses, broken bones, various trauma, suicides, childbirths, and sick kids. He also visited his extended family in Spain on leave with my grandmother. He learned his maternal grandfather, who never learned English and lost his speaking voice, sent a multitude of letters back to Spain complaining about this golfo (layabout/bum/good for nothing) grandson. My grandmother too umbrage to that. Also in the mountains of Galicia where his father hailed from, a shot of whiskey and raw egg counted as breakfast.
After the Army he returned home, grew his hair out and wandered around, ultimately settling in Eugene, OR where he worked at White Bird Free Clinic. Here he met Kitty Tucker, my mom. He fell in love and when she headed East to Washington, DC, he went with her.
In spite of an incomplete education and a somewhat haphazard work history, his friend Saul Landau helped him get a job working for Senator Abourezk (the first Arab-American elected to the Senate, from South Dakota — he only served 1 term) working on Indian affair issues. Here he started learning about Uranium mining on the reservations, just as my mother was getting involved in the Karen Silkwood case. I can’t remember exactly what he did, but something he did angered another Senator enough that Abourezk let him go as a result.
From the Senate my dad began working (and fundraising for) the Environmental Policy Center (later Environmental Policy Institute and ultimately subsumed by Friends of the Earth), a young non-profit environmental lobbying group. Here he began learning more about the nuclear weapons complex, the dangers of radiation (think down winders from the nuclear tests as well as employees as the various plants) and gaining friendships/mentorships with reporters, whistleblowers, and scientists (particularly Dr. Thomas Mancuso –who was black balled for refusing to say long term low-level radiation exposure didn’t didn’t cause cancer and Dr. Alice Stewart, whose research pioneered the connection between x-rays and childhood cancer and later on a study of cancer at the Hanford site).
By the early 1980s, my parents grew weary of living in the group house (kind of like a commune, but not quite, also full of a cast of characters, some who became something like family) where I was raised and wanted to put me into a better school system. In 1982 we moved a mile away from Takoma, DC to Takoma Park, MD. Instead of a large house always filled with activity and hippies, we now moved into a single family home. A year later they added my sister Kerry Alice (after Alice Stewart) to the family.
My dad, an autodidact (he loved this word for self taught), over time grew to be something of an expert in his field and was hired by Senator John Glenn of OH (and astronaut fame) to work on the Governmental Affairs Committee. Here he delighted in his role of overseeing and investigating the nuclear weapons complex and it’s detritus. He also helped pass the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act which allowed for long term monitoring and compensation for certain diseases and cancers as a result of radiation from nuclear testing or uranium mining/transportation/milling. Though this may have been one of the instances where he was reprimanded for wearing his beloved New Balance sneakers on the floor of the Senate, this is one of the things he was most proud of.
From there he got a job working as Assistant Deputy Secretary at the Department of Energy under the Clinton Administration. (I would later learn in large part to help pay for my college.) He claimed this was his chance to work from within. He traveled to North Korea (and was briefly the highest official to do so) where he had his own personal overseer who even trailed him on his jogs, as concerns about their nuclear capabilities grew. For some, his name was met with animosity for his tenacious spirit, while others would send mail addressed to “Dr. Robert Alvarez,” which got a kick out of.
In addition to his work in nuclear issues, he would field my frustrated calls from college, manage the loss of Shawn (my half-brother and he would say his son, from my mom’s previous marriage) to suicide, my mother’s declining health, and do his best to support his employees. (He worked very hard to get one of his secretaries out of the administrative path, where he felt so many black women were stuck, into a position with growth).
He lost this job when the scandal of my mom’s weed use (and growth in our basement –see above: hippies) became public. But because he was so well liked and such an expert in his field, he landed at Institute for Policy Studies where he worked until he retired. He also got the chance to be a college professor (although always with a co instructor since he didn’t actually have a college diploma) teaching grad students nonproliferation.
Beyond work he was a devoted husband and steadfastly supportive father. As I floundered in my teenage years and it looked like I might need to repeat a grade (because I never went to school), we went to interview at several private schools. At one, after talking to my dad, the headmaster said “Amber is clearly the apple of your eye.” Without missing a beat he responded, “well if she is, her sister is my pomegranate.” (aka “Indian apple”) I thought it was possibly the best response he could have.
Bob loved jogging, walking, biking, classical music, jazz music, cooking, jokes and storytelling. When he was initially diagnosed with ALS (later changed to Parkinson’s), I moved him close to me I know he missed his friends and his ability to talk (which deteriorated rather quickly it felt like), but got to enjoy time with his grandkids and still some semblance of independence (first in an apartment and later in assisted living).
He died from complications from Parkinson’s in his assisted living apartment after a brief infection. He will be deeply missed.