James Robert Hester, Jr.

James Robert (“Bob”) Hester, Jr. was born in Old Hickory, Tennessee on December 25, 1943, the son of James Robert and Edith Lois. Bob grew up in Madison, Tennessee and attended Amqui School through the elementary grades. He graduated from Madison High School in 1962. He attended the University of Tennessee, graduating with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering in 1967. He graduated with an M.S. in Metallurgical Engineering in 1969. Bob served in the U.S. Army from 1970 through 1972, attaining the rank of Captain.

Bob married Susan Chambers of Huntsville, Alabama on June 30, 1967. Their son Robert Todd was born February 29, 1972. Their daughter Camille Susan was born June 18, 1974. And their daughter Paige Susan was born July 15, 1975. They have a granddaughter Madison Paige, who was born December 26, 1994. She gave birth to their great-grandson Derek James on March 11, 2015, and to their great-grandson Jaxon Lee on March 3, 2021. He is also survived by three sisters: Linda Marable of Franklin, Tennessee; Carol Pearce of Ardmore, Alabama; and Jo Anne Cook of Ardmore, Alabama.

Bob and his family moved to Aiken, South Carolina when he went to work at what was then the Savannah River Plant on January 1, 1973. They lived there for seven years, before transferring to Wilmington, Delaware for three years. When they returned to the South, they settled in Augusta, Georgia, where Bob lived for the rest of his life. He retired as an Engineer from SRS on December 31, 2005. He went back to school in January 2006, attaining a B.A. in Music in June 2010 from Augusta State University and taking History classes for another five years after that. All total, he had fifteen years of post-secondary education—he liked to joke that “studying was the only thing I was every really good at.”

Bob was a long-time member of the Church of Christ and had a love for teaching others about Christ. He taught many Bible classes, and his mantra was to have a broken and contrite heart. He was an avid deer and turkey hunter; for many years, you could find him in the woods of Georgia and South Carolina on early mornings, before he reported to work. Bob was passionate about music and the arts. He played the guitar and the piano; he performed with the Augusta Players, Fort Gordon Dinner Theater, Augusta Choral Society, and August Opera; and he sang with the Augusta Collegium Musicum for eleven years. He was interested in slave songs and edited a book published by the University of South Carolina titled A Yankee Scholar in Coastal South Carolina: William Francis Allen’s Civil War Journals. He rediscovered forgotten slave songs that originated in Augusta, and he set them to music. The Creative Impressions community youth group performed the songs that Bob arranged and recorded an album-length compact disc of them. Bob also loved poetry and began memorizing and reciting poems in the seventh grade; he was enormously proud of having taught his great-grandson Derek to recite A Visit from St. Nicholas—popularly known as The Night Before Christmas—by heart.

Throughout his life, Bob was guided by his love for God, his wife, and his family.

A memorial service will be held at 12:00 PM on Thursday, February 26, 2026, in the chapel of Thomas Poteet and Son. The family will receive friends at the funeral home from 11:00 AM until service time.

Thomas Poteet & Son Funeral Directors, 214 Davis Rd., Augusta, GA 30907 (706) 364-8484. Please sign the guestbook at www.thomaspoteet.com