Bob Lee Alphin has pretty much seen it all over the years.

From his days in the military, to his work with astronauts in the 1960s, to running a car dealership in Henry County, he’s lived what many would call a full life.

And he’s got the pictures to prove it.

Still, he said, there’s a common thread that ties his varied experiences together, which he values above everything else — the people he’s met along the way.

“People is what I love,” said Alphin, 81. “What I’ve accomplished throughout my whole life is people.”

Alphin was born on July 3, 1937, and grew up in Lagrange, N.C. He then moved to a farm near Kinston, N.C., and stayed there until one of his life’s passions came calling.

“I left there when I was 18 1/2 years old and went into the service,” he said. “I started in the Navy in 1956. I was in boot camp in San Diego, Calif.

“That was a forward thing for me when I went into the service,” added Alphin. “I thought it would give me a lot of ideas, seeing different people doing different things. If you’re in the Navy, Army, Air Force or any of them, There’s so many fields that you can be in. I was in the surgical field. I went in to be in the electronic field, but I’m colorblind, so I couldn’t go into the electronic field, so I went to the hospital corps.”

Alphin attended hospital corpsman school in San Diego, before being sent to Corpus Christi, Texas. He worked in naval hospitals there and in Great Lakes, Ill., for operating-room technician school.

“After graduation, I went to Key West, Fla., at the U.S. Naval Hospital,” he said. “From there, I went to the USS Independence. I went with the Marines. The Navy furnishes medics for Marines.

“I specialized, when I was in the service, in orthopedic surgery,” continued Alphin. “I was an assistant to surgeons. Plus, I was an assistant in Key West, Fla., with everybody – GYN, general surgery, everybody. It was a small hospital. We only had about seven technicians on the whole surgical team there. Might’ve had eight at most.”

That experience, Alphin emphasized, was vastly different from the ones he later had while on a surgical team at a naval hospital in Virginia.

“In Portsmouth, Va., they had 55 corpsmen that worked in the operating room,” he said. “We had eight major surgical rooms, and two surgical rooms to do minor surgery with.”

Alphin remained in that role from February 1963 to May 1966. He did this, he said, while carrying his family’s legacy of military service with him.

“It didn’t just start with me, being military,” he said proudly. “It started with my uncle in World War I. My brother was in Korea. We covered World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam with our family. And, we’ve got some first, second and third cousins that are still making a career in the Army. They’re overseas.”

Alphin’s service includes a stint on an Astronaut Recovery Team in the early days of the space race, working with the Mercury and Gemini programs.

“I was cleared for top-secret,” he said. “I had a chance to go into different places that a lot of people wouldn’t be able to go into.”

Alphin was also on a medical team in Key West during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Looking back, he counts that as one of the most important aspects of his service, because of what might have been if it had ended differently.

“They could have taken a missile and shot it over 2,000 miles away, and it probably could have destroyed the beautiful land that we have today to raise all these things that are feeding the world — wheat fields, cornfields, soybean fields and all that,” said Alphin. “It’s just a tremendous amount of things that it could have destroyed, and you wouldn’t be able to plant nothin’.”

“I think it helped save the United States,” he said. “It showed our forces that we could get together in such a short period of time to protect this country.”

Alphin was discharged from the Navy on May 31, 1966. He said he is grateful for his experiences in the military, and for the people he encountered there.

“There’s a lot of things I’m proud of, but the military was good because it educated me on different people,” he said. “You had different surgeons to work with, you had a category of nurses to work with, then on top of that, with the Marines, they were different people themselves. They train all day to fight and we trained all day to repair them.”

Alphin moved to the Atlanta area in 1967, and began working for Richards Manufacturing Company out of Memphis, Tenn. He then embarked on the next phase of his career, selling cars in the Atlanta area. He moved to McDonough in 1979.

Alphin ran Bob Lee Auto before buying Carmichael Motor Company in April of 1990. He remained there until his retirement in 2008.

Alphin’s wealth of experiences also shines a spotlight on his love of NASCAR racing. Over the years, he’s attended numerous races at Atlanta Motor Speedway and other tracks across the southeast.

As he showed off his collection of racing jackets and memorabilia, Alphin acknowledged that his interest in the sport was initially an extension of being in the car business, but that it later translated into an opportunity as an assistant chairman with Speedway Children’s Charities in Atlanta. Alphin helped raise approximately $4 million through the charity organization.

As with other elements of his career, Alphin said he has worked hard to earn the respect of people he’s met through NASCAR and SCC.

Alphin’s companion, Sandy Hale, met him when he needed a caretaker after suffering a fall several years ago. Soon afterward, she said, she also fell, leading him to return the favor.

“He started walking, and I’ve been down since,” said Hale, 76.

Until recently, Alphin also took care of a menagerie of animals, including horses, chickens and hogs. Today, Alphin and Hale share his home, where they sell Hale’s homemade pecan pies and other items to visitors who come by.

Hale said Alphin’s generosity has touched many lives, including her own.

“He’s a wonderful caregiver and a wonderful man,” she said. “He cares about everybody. He helps anybody.”

Alphin said his time in the car business, in particular, taught him a great deal about “people and respect.” He harkened back to the days when people could do business with nothing more than a handshake, noting that such things are “hard to find” today.

As Alphin looks back over his life and his experiences, he is confident that he is well-regarded for the way he has treated people.

“People trust me, and I respect people,” he said. “That’s what the world has lost – respect for other people. But I feel that I have earned the respect of many people.”