Robert was nominated by his wife Rachel:
My husband is one of a kind for sure. He is funny, sweet, and the best husband and father to our 2 kids that I could ask for. The past year and half have been some of the most difficult times for him. He has been in unimaginable pain. He had back surgery last Nov (he delayed his surgery for months so that we could take a family trip to Disney first) only to end up with a major pulmonary embolism (blood clot that went to his lungs) and spend Christmas in the hospital. We are so lucky he survived that. He suffered another ruptured disk in his back in May and was in so much pain he could barely walk. He finally was able to have surgery to correct that a few weeks ago and unfortunately ended up with pain in his arm which turned out to be another blood clot. He was told this clot “shouldnt” go anywhere since it was a superficial vein and it should go away on it’s own. It didn’t. He suffered another pulmonary embolism and spend most of last week in the hospital. They did a CT scan and determined he’s lost about 20% of his left lung and will have to be on blood thinners the rest of his life. We still aren’t sure how this will effect his health long term or if he will be able to remain in the Navy. He’s supposed to retire Oct 2019, he will have reached 20 years then. He’s been so strong through everything and tries to downplay all his worry because he doesn’t want to worry us. Even though his surgery to correct his ruptured disk was done, he’s still dealing with pain every day from permanent nerve damage that was done. He tries to hide his pain so we won’t worry but it’s obvious he’s struggling sometimes and we aren’t able to go out and do things with the kids like we used to. It would mean so much to get some good news and surprise him with something good. He would argue he doesn’t deserve to be honored but he does so much for our family he truly is our hero.