Don Roberts


Donald L. Roberts, retired RIG, Southwest Region, passed away November 7, 2018.
The following is Don's published obituary:
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Donald Lewis Roberts, passed away Wednesday, November 7, 2018. He was born in Dallas, Iowa, on Thanksgiving Day November 29, 1928, to Herman and Maudie Roberts. Don was the fifth of nine children. He enjoyed playing sports and graduated from Dallas School in 1946. Aspiring to be a Coach he attended Simpson College on an athletics scholarship receiving his BA in Physical Education in 1950. On August 25, 1950, he married Betty Jean Fortune. Donald said he graduated college at the wrong time. The teaching profession was being flooded with WWII veterans finishing college. This didn’t matter, Donald was drafted into the United States Army that same year. He was given the choice between being a Lieutenant in Combat Infantry or Sergeant in Counter Intelligence. Being an intelligent Iowan, he chose counter intelligence and spent twenty years tracking down spies and saboteurs. He trailed KGB Agents in Berlin, Germany, Russian spies in Vietnam, and spy rings in our nation’s capital. Don’s next career started in 1971, as a special investigator for the United States Department of Agriculture. Over the course of the next twenty years he worked his way up from Special Investigator to Regional Inspector General for the Southwestern Region. Don retired in 1991. During retirement, they enjoyed traveling, family reunions, and spending Spring and Fall at Pensacola Beach. After Betty's death in 2006, Don married Rosalee Hyland in 2014. She gave him great comfort in the last years of his life. Donald once said that the only thing he did not get to do in this life was coach. He is survived by his brothers Richard Roberts and Daryl Roberts, his sons, Nicholas Roberts and Neal Roberts, daughter in laws, Tamara Roberts and Julie Roberts, grandchildren Connor Roberts, Cade Roberts, Sydney Roberts, and Audra Roberts. He was preceded in death by his parents, Herman and Maudie Roberts, his sisters, Katherine Pond and Margarite Kauzlarich, his brothers, Leland Roberts, Vernon Roberts, Carl “Kippy” Roberts, and Joe Roberts.