Biographical Note
Robert Edgar Cecil was born July 20, 1928, in Bluffton, Indiana. After graduating from Stanford University and its Graduate School of Business, Cecil accepted an import-export position with a firm in the Philippine Islands. In 1930 Cecil served as assistant manager of the Manila branch office of West Coast Life and became manager in 1935. In that same year, he married Sue Elizabeth Jurika. In January 1942 Cecil was taken prisoner by the Japanese when they took Manila. Cecil was held as a prisoner until the island's liberation by American forces in 1945. From 1958 to 1961 Cecil served as president of the Continental Life and Accident Insurance Company in Boise, Idaho, until his untimely death in a fatal car accident on June 17, 1961, near Lovelock, Nevada.