Bob Schwartz – off to the following nice journey – 8/9/2025
To TEH readers,
We have been going by way of the motions since June. A few of you might have observed.
We gave Bob a ship off a couple of days in the past, and are beginning to get again to work.
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| Dessert at Maryanne and Bob’s fiftieth anniversary lunch. |
I have been enthusiastic about this submit for a month as a result of I need to take a second to honor Bob in my very own approach. After a pair years residing with stage 4 most cancers, it lastly obtained him. For those who knew Bob, you’d know that if anybody may will himself to maintain going, it was him.
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| Excellent in his area (his favourite joke) |
He was hardly ever defeated and any loss led to a greater state of affairs – even when it was simply not all the time instantly clear. He was my sister’s husband, and when he married my sister, he married the household. There is not a considered one of us that he did not swoop in and rescue a time or two. Our mother, who raised 5 of us alone, breathed a sigh of reduction for the primary time in about 20 years.
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| Bob and Rudy patrolling the tree farm on the finish of a day on the “frogmobile.” It is inexperienced, and the farm is Frog Hole, so it is smart, proper? |
He was a kind of uncommon individuals who say they need to do one thing, and the following factor you realize, he was doing it. Generally you bought to go alongside on the journey. That might be journey, studying to fly, attempting a brand new meals, or plowing a area, elevating recreation birds for launch, or the famend “field of geese” and every part in between. He was all the time as much as one thing.
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| Hamming it up at NASA |
I do not need to be hypocritical, so it has been an fascinating lesson that the issues that made me love him have been additionally the issues that irritated me. It took me years to study to not ask for something to be performed till I used to be absolutely dressed and able to get on the market and help. As soon as the phrases have been uttered, the clock was ticking, and inside minutes I might hear the frogmobile roaring up the hill. There was such a factor as “Schwartz time,” and we have been all residing in it. He was the solar we revolved round. One simply wanted to learn to navigate. We’re studying to work within the semi-darkness proper now, however we’ll get there.
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| Driving his restored Mannequin A Ford all the time made him smile. A-OOO-Ga! |
He was driving a tractor and dealing within the fields whereas he may nonetheless present his age in fingers. He was a tractor virtuoso, and so it was becoming that the final day he was cell, he used a small ladder to climb on the tractor and retrieve one of many using mowers from a sinkhole within the yard. That very same stage of finesse utilized to his years of sizzling air ballooning across the east coast. He gained contests in that balloon, as a result of regardless of the truth that for essentially the most half the wind is in cost, he realized learn how to work with it as a substitute of in opposition to it.
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| Scorching work on the farm in his youthful days. |
He taught me to drive after many had given up. I used to be satisfied I could not do it, however he was having none of that. Later he taught my daughter to drive a truck with a handbook transmission, and in some way she realized that there was nothing she could not do. I am undecided if the children who had him of their lives know simply how he instilled power and functionality in them. He by no means requested for something in return.
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| Molly and her “Bobbo” |
In his later years, he struggled with the outcomes of strokes. He realized to make use of his left hand, and did not let something cease him – however he withdrew from quite a lot of us. In some methods, COVID gave us extra time to be with him. We have been a pod right here on the farm, and located methods to have a good time and luxuriate in ourselves regardless of what was occurring. When his most cancers was identified, we caught collectively and did what we may to assist him and preserve him blissful. Principally that meant a LOT of fine eating places.
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| There have been a couple of fantastic, enjoyable days between the hospital and in-home care. That is when Maryanne returned from an appointment to search out that I might served Bob a buffet of junk meals – as a result of why not? |
This previous summer time is a blur of hospital, residence care, and inpatient hospice. By all of it, he dealt with it like he dealt with every part else, his kindness and humor shining by way of to the very finish. 
Thanks for every part, Bob. You probably did an excellent job. See ya round.