Monticello Live

Robert Lane, a native of Monticello, has always been fascinated with the many WWII veterans of his Drew County childhood. These men and women were people he saw every day–church members, community leaders, local businessmen, doctors, lawyers, teachers, farmers, grocers and restaurant owners, who, after the war, simply came back to Drew County and returned to their lives without any fanfare. To Lane, their service to our country during this pivotal era, as well as the broad field of where they had served, is local history that deserves to be documented and remembered.

On trips back home to visit his parents, the late Corine and Herbert Lane, and his sister, Judy Bynum of Collins, he often requested that local vets recount their WWII stories that are sadly being forgotten with the passage of time. Recently, as he began researching the countless communities of Drew County where these soldiers lived and the theaters of war where they were sent, respectively, he was amazed at the width and breadth of the contribution to the war effort from our tiny county.

Growing up in Monticello, Lane attended both Drew Central and Monticello schools, graduating from MHS in 1963. He attended Arkansas A&M College for two years before transferring to the University of Arkansas, where he graduated in 1968. Immediately upon graduation, he was enrolled in the Naval Officers Candidates School before entering the Vietnam War as an officer on the aircraft carrier USS America in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast of Vietnam. On the ship he was responsible for firefighting and damage control of the vast ship during his tenure. Lane completedhis Master’s Degree in Political Science from Arizona State University 1974 while working for the Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress.

In 1965, as a sophomore in college, he was chosen as one of the first John F. Kennedy student interns and worked for Arkansas Congressman Oren Harris in Washington DC. This experience sealed his goal of government-based career choices for the rest of his career. Later he served on the staff of Senator John L. McClellan and on the professional staff of the Senate Commerce and House Government Operations Committees. From 1977 to 1979, he was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the Department of the Interior as a Special Assistant, focusing on replanning troubled Western water and irrigation projects projects.

In 1979 he relocated to Arizona, where he served as State Land Commissioner for seven years and an Arizona State Parks Board member. Subsequently, he was engaged as a vice president or principal for several consulting firms managing specialty teams conducting resource management plans and environmental impact studies on vast areas of Western federal lands of New Mexico, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California. These projects resulted in the creation of wilderness areas, national parks, wildlife preserves, national historic sites, and national conservation areas.

Toward the end of his career, Lane returned to Capitol Hill to serve as the Deputy Chief Administrative Officer of the US House of Representatives before retiring in 2011. His time as the director of the Green the Capitol initiative was an exciting time as well. Currently, Lane serves on the National Advisory Council of the National Parks and Conservation Association. He and his wife, Diane Clark, reside in McLean, Virginia.

On Sunday, November 9, at 2:00 P.M. at the invitation of the Drew County Historical Society, Robert will speak at the Drew County Museum concerning his ongoing research and ideas about the war effort of the two thousand Drew County World War II veterans called to serve from our rural geographic and political subdivision of the nation. Discovering even more about their remarkable service histories will serve the future generations as a meaningful reminder of this profound, massive, national commitment of America to equip, train, fight and sacrifice to win a two-front war with Japan and Germany. All are invited to attend.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2025 at 12:37 am and is filed under Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.