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 (19941996) then Editor (19962002) 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. She passed away on May 8, 2018. 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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