Robert (Bob) Waterman, beloved South Whidbey community member, died at home surrounded by loved ones on December 16, 2025.
Bob and his wife Anne Waterman moved to Whidbey Island in 1998, after he retired from a career as a professor of anatomy and a pioneering medical educator at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine.
Bob was born in 1940 and grew up in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. After graduating with a Biology degree from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, Bob was awarded a Woodrow Wilson fellowship based on an essay in which he passionately discussed his desire to teach and pursued a Ph.D. in Biological Structure at the University of Washington.
While in his first year of graduate studies, Bob received a fateful invitation to an afternoon coffee at the home of his faculty advisor, Dr. Edward Roosen-Runge. At that event, a very shy, nearly speechless Bob caught the eye of his professor’s daughter Anne, then 18 years old, who was to become Bob’s wife of 60 years. Their long and loving marriage gave rise to a family of four children, Erin Waterman, Sara Saltee, Shannon Waterman, and Christopher Waterman, Son-in-law Steve Saltee, Daughter-in-law Nichole Maiman Waterman, and four grandchildren, Carli Newman, Annie Saltee, Charlie Waterman, and Oliver Waterman.
After finishing his PhD, Bob was awarded a 5-year postdoctoral research fellowship at Harvard, then accepted a teaching position at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine in 1972. For the first decade of his tenure at UNM, Bob pursued a traditional professorship focused on embryology research, scanning electron microscopy, and the delivery of humorful and award-winning anatomy lectures (including an infamous barn-burner of a lecture on the development of the rectum and anus that students did not soon forget).
In the early 1980s, Bob’s professional life took a dramatic turn when he joined a small group of passionate, creative colleagues eager to develop a new, more empowering way of preparing medical students for work as primary care physicians in rural areas. Together, they pioneered an innovative approach which replaced a curriculum centered around lectures and memorization with one that engaged students in active learning through case-based problem-solving in small cohort groups. Their innovative Primary Care Curriculum is still in existence today.
The life-changing PCC years unleashed Bob’s creativity and ignited a new depth of connection with his students and colleagues. He transformed his embryology lab into a curriculum-design lab and traveled around the world with his colleagues to introduce the PCC approach to rural medicine programs in places like China and the Middle East.
Upon retirement to Whidbey Island in 1998, Bob devoted himself to learning about his new hometown of Langley, digging deeply into the stories and structures that have shaped Langley’s past and present. He served on the Langley City Council, then turned his focus to preserving Langley’s history through the Langley Historic Preservation Commission and the South Whidbey Historical Society. He also served as one of the founding board members for the Langley Main Street Association.
Always a consummate teacher, Bob looked for ways to bring Whidbey’s history alive for both locals and visitors. His projects included the book on Langley he co-authored with Frances Wood for the Images of America series; the many historical panels and plaques he worked to place around town; the series of “then and now” images he painstakingly created by merging historical and contemporary photographs; the “Walk and Talk” lectures he led through the streets of Langley, and the live theatrical events he helped produce to honor the town’s centennial in 2013 including a flash-mob style Suffrage march and a Langley Live play that played to a sold-out house at WICA.
Bob will be remembered by students, colleagues, and family alike as a kind, gentle, broadly curious man with a deeply silly side, a flair for the dramatic, and a contagious enthusiasm for sharing the topics and projects that he loved.
A Celebration of Life service is planned for the afternoon of March 7, 2026 at The Dancing Fish Winery in Freeland.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in Bob’s name to the Langley Main Street Association, the South Whidbey Historical Society, the South Whidbey High School Performing Arts Boosters (in honor of the great delight the South Whidbey Jazz Band brought to him while his granddaughters were members), or Project HOPE.
