Robert W. Little Jr. — Leader in Sandblasting Industry
The San Diego Union-Tribune
September 23, 2004
Grime and rust didn’t stand a chance when Robert W. Little Jr. began to mobilize one of the biggest sandblasting and steam - cleaning teams in San Diego. With Mr. Little at the helm, a company his father founded in the 1920s evolved from ornamental stone work to cleaning and resurfacing Navy ships, tuna boats and decaying city buildings.
“During his career, his firm sandblasted and repainted inside and out just about every Navy ship and tuna boat homeported in San Diego,” said his son, Ron, who bought the R.W. Little Co. from his father.
Mr. Little, who retired in 1992, dies Monday at San Diego Hospice of complications from melanoma. He was 83.
By the 1970s, Mr. Little was operating one of the state’s largest and busiest corrosion control firms, with more than 100 employees. In March 1985, R.W. Little Co. was named Small Business of the Month by the San Diego Chamber of Commerce.
As a 14 year old Point Loma High School student, Mr. Little began helping his father in the family business at 3923 Pacific Highway.
When Mr. Little took over the business in 1946 from his ailing father, who died of colon cancer in 1948, he cultivated a post World War II seafaring clientele along the waterfront.
He also sandblasted the facades of such aging Balboa Park structures as the Hospitality House, and devoted three weeks to sandblasting the 25,000 square foot face of the 60 foot high San Dieguito Dam.
All was well until environmental concerns arose in the 1960s, jeopardizing the industry’s future.
“A visual dust reading rule would, if enforced statewide, outlawed all exterior sandblast in California”, Ron Little said. “It was impossible to comply.”
Mr. Little and other industry leaders lobbied state legislators, who passed a bill establishing a nine person committee that included representatives of the sandblasting industry, corporate customers of the industry and the Air Pollution Control District.
With Mr. Little as chairman, the Abrasive Blasting Committee on Standards for Abrasive Material considered less-onerous air pollution restrictions that would preserve the industry’s economic viability.
“He had to walk a fine line as committee chairman between his constituency and the regulatory community,” his son said. “I sat through many meetings in which members of the Associated Sandblasting Contractors called him a sellout, wondered why he was compromising and not fighting harder.”
But compromise, as it turned out, was the answer. It modified but did not eliminate what Mr. Little considered a misunderstood and essential industry.
In the early 1970s, Mr. Little, a navy veteran of World War II, gained a greater share of the Navy ship market by subcontracting with major shipyards after the Navy closed its public work repair facility.
“The Navy was no longer doing the work in house,” Ron Little said.
The increased Navy work compensated for the decline in San Diego Tuna industry, another major client, in the late 1970s.
In 1982, Mr. Little sold the portable sandblasting portion of his business, including the Navy operation, to his son. For the next decade, Mr. Little Jr. specialized in refurbishing and recoating everything from rusty furniture and gym equipment to recreational vessels.
“He wanted to become a dentist,” his son said, “but, with his father’s failing health, he tried to keep the business going. One of his biggest regrets was never graduating from college.”
In addition to his son Ron, of San Diego, the family includes Mr. Little’s wife, Oranous; daughter, Marta Cotterell of Boston; and four grandchildren.