Biography

Bob was born in Grant Hospital (now Grant Medical Center) in Columbus, Ohio (on November 6, 1944), the son of C. Frank and Grace L. (Billman) Stallings.  He grew up in Westerville, OH.  (An interesting perspective on the history of Westerville may be obtained by reading the special commemorative (in PDF) written by Harold B. Hancock and Millard J. Miller for the U.S. Bicentennial, Westerville and Its Religious Heritage.)  Bob's father was a high school teacher in the Westerville (OH) School District, teaching primarily sophomore English, who, after retiring, worked for a variety of men's clothing stores in central Ohio.  His mother was a housewife.  She once wrote a 24-page history of the Billman extended family which can be read by clicking here.  Both were raised in rural Monroe County in southeastern Ohio.

Bob graduated from Westerville High School (now Westerville South High School) in 1962 and attended The Ohio State University (B.A. 1966, M.A. 1968, Ph.D. 1971), receiving his doctorate in Sociology.  While at Ohio State, he was a Graduate Research Associate at the Disaster Research Center (since 1985 located at the University of Delaware) where he was a member of field teams studying, among other natural disasters, tornadoes in Topeka (Kansas) and Chicago, Hurricane Camille on the U.S. Gulf Coast, and floods and landslides in Italy.  He was Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Evansville (IN) from 1971 to 1975.  He joined the faculty of what was then the School of Public Administration at the University of Southern California in 1975, retiring in 2004.  Currently, he is Professor Emeritus in the USC Price School of Public Policy.  He served as Book Review Editor (1994–1996) then Editor (1996–2002) of the International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters and was President of the International Research Committee on Disasters (International Sociological Association, Research Committee 39) from 2002 to 2006.

Afer retiring, Bob was a member of the USC Retired Faculty Association (RFA) Board of Directors, serving as its President for three terms.  He created and for a few years managed websites for several USC retiree organizations, including the RFA.  He also served on the Executive Committee of the USC Emeriti Center and was the RFA representative on the USC Staff Retirement Association (SRA) Board of Directors.  He represented retired faculty on a task force designing a university-wide faculty records management system.  In the local community, he served as a member of a special planning group for the Covina-Valley Unified School District.

Bob has lived in Covina, California, since 1975.  His wife of more than 50 years, Carole Anne (Morrow) Stallings, was born in Ashtabula (OH), graduated from Edgewood High School in 1963, and received her B.S. in Education from The Ohio State University in 1967.  They have a son and daughter and eight grandchildren.  Their son, Jeffrey, has an undergraduate degree from USC in Economics and an MBA from the University of California, Los Angeles.  Their daughter, Wendy, is a graduate of the USC Marshall School of Business with an emphasis in distribution management.  Three of their grandchildren are college graduates: one from Milligan College (TN), one from the University of California, San Diego, and a third from the University of Oregon.  Another grandchild attended California Polytechnic University, Pomona.

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