Robert Fassnacht: The Death of a Promising Graduate Student

The summer night was quiet and peaceful on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was a beautiful sight in the night sky. Most people were sound asleep in their beds. The days were counting down before the start of the fall semester.

The quiet was smashed by a sudden explosion on campus. Sterling Hall had been bombed. The building is damaged from the inside while the outside stands tall.

After the incident, John Lynch tripped over a body in the basement with dim lights. He tripped over Robert Fassnacht, who was facedown on the ground. His account, shared with Media Milwaukee is a grim reminder of the bombing’s human cost.

“Well, I tripped on him. I didn’t fall over but I, you know, I, I was walking along and, and I tripped on the body. It’s dark down there for the most part, there were a lot of lights, electricity in the building was off ,” said Lynch.

“And so there were some dim lights, you know, but not bright lights. And I just tripped on, on a submerged body and as I said, it didn’t fall over, but it was close. and I reached out and I, yeah, felt to what it was and then I felt who, felt, felt the curly red hair. And Bob had curly red hair.”

For Fassnacht and his family, the Sterling Hall bombing, perpetrated by four students wanting to make a point against the Vietnam War and Army research on campus, would have generational consequence.

The Sterling Hall bombing killed Fassnacht and injured others. It happened on Aug. 24,1970, around 3 a.m. iat the University of Wisconsin campus.

Fassnacht was a physicist researcher. He was working on his post-doctoral studies on superconductivity. Fassnancht came from Kalamazoo college after finishing his college education. He was the only person in the basement before the bomb went off in the building, according to court records.

Fassnacht, 33, was working in a basement lab in the Physics Department below the Army Mathematics Research Center.

Frank Scarpace, who retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a physics professor, was close to Robert Fassnacht. He said, “I was helping my friend Bob Fassnacht with an experiment. I came down to the lab and helped him. At about midnight, my wife called and wanted me home. Bob packed up his stuff and went home too, I found out later he came back at about 1 a.m..”

The bomb went off two hours later.

Fassnacht is more than a Sterling Hall bombing victim. He was from South Bend, Indiana. He was an intelligent, gifted individual, and loved his family, those who knew him say.

“He was older than I was; he had been a graduate student for a fair amount of time. One of the things he did in his spare time he built a harpsichord in the lab after hours. He was very much a man of all seasons. Very gifted with many respects,” Scarpace said in an interview with Media Milwaukee.

“He was probably more sympathetic to the people doing the bombing, even though he would never do anything violent.”

Retired college professor David Schuster was another victim. He was under the heavy rubble after the bomb went off. He was lucky to be alive. Schuster suffered from a broken shoulder, kidney damage, and was deaf in one ear.

During an interview with NBC 15 Madison anchor John Stofflet, Schuster said: “The only possible reason that I wasn’t killed instantly, I must have been standing directly behind a building support, so the blast was taken by the pillar I was in the shadow of.”

He was shielded by a building support and the blast hit the pillars he was working on. He is lucky to be alive and finished his college career and pursue a career in physics education. After the bombing, he finished his master’s program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He went for his PH. D at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. He also taught 22 years as a physics professor at the University of Western Michigan.

After the bombing, Lynch left Madison after 10 years with a physics degree. He worked at Los Alamos lab laboratories in New Mexico. He was helping with bomb detection by looking for the atmosphere for a burst of radiation. This was looking for countries violating the nuclear test ban treaty. He worked for NASA headquarters in the department of energy.

There were other victims, lots of property damage and lost research.

“William Evans and Roger Whitmer both were injured, knocked about received cuts and bruises,” said Micheal L. Zaleski, a prosecutor, who outlined the trail of damage during the sentencing of Karleton Armstrong. He comments are contained in court transcripts obtained by Media Milwaukee.

“Paul Wuinn received cuts, bruises and was knocked unconscious.”

“Night watchman Norbert Sutter: hemorrhaging, skull fractures, cuts and bruises, hearing loss, fragments in the eyes.”

There were 26 buildings damaged, $1.3-million-dollar damage with a grand total of $2.5 million dollars after the building’s blast damaged other areas on campus, court records say.

The prosecutor said that, of 15 years of research, only one or two years remained. He said the university department “couldn’t bring in grad students for a year; they lost a full year of research.”

Fassnacht left behind a wife, a 3-year-old boy, and year and half old twin girls. For a time, his wife moved abroad.