EDITORS NOTE: This column first appeared in June of 2001 and is being reprinted today, with little editing, as a timely tribute to a brother and World War II veteran.
From the back deck of brother Bobbys home you can lob a rock into the Arkansas River, a whitewater rafters paradise that courses along the outskirts of downtown Buena Vista, Colo., located two miles upstream.
From his front yard you can gaze at the Rocky Mountains snow-capped Collegiate Peaks, where puffs of white clouds drift slowly by in a blue sky.
Its a captivating, almost intoxicating view.
Bobby moved there about 10 years ago after living for four decades in Colorado Springs, 70 miles to the east. He left Henderson in 1952 with his wife and two young daughters, Donna and Ann, lured to Colorado, as the story goes, by photographs of the Rockies.
He made a half dozen trips back to Kentucky over the years, each time inviting one and all to come see him — and the mountains. Others in our family took him up on his offers more than once, but I never found the time.
Until last week.
Thats when brother Neel and I made the 2,300-mile roundtrip to Buena Vista for Bobbys memorial service Tuesday in Cornerstone Church.
Although Bobby, 78, had been a hero of mine ever since he showed up at our Holloway Street home in his Army uniform in 1945 with a box of chocolate bars from the Queen Mary, age and geography gaps limited our opportunities to bond.
As the family discovered from his birth certificate and enlistment papers last week, he entered the service at age 17. I was only a toddler then and was six when he returned home at the end of WWII (during which he was a platoon guide for 40 rifleman and took a hit in the leg in one of three battles in Europe).
Three years later, my mom and I moved to Morganfield and, four years later, Bobby left his job with Henderson Gas Appliance Co. to move his family out west.
So a lot of what I know about my brother came from others, although I was enthralled by a number of tales from him (most of them true) during his irregular visits back to Kentucky.
I learned more last week during memorial service testimonials from family, friends and his fellow volunteers at a church mission, where they dubbed him Saint Bob for the food — much of it grown in his garden and cooked in his kitchen — that he brought there regularly.
He was, as person after person testified, much better at giving than receiving. (One lady recalled that he borrowed a small amount of coffee from her one day and left a three-pound can on her doorstep the next.)
Darren, a 25-year-old transplanted Hoosier who Bobby befriended 10 years ago, told of fishing and hunting trips and workshop adventures with his older buddy whose personality was in many ways like my dads, he said.
The family drew a lot of comfort from the testimonials, which Neel and I replayed over and over on the 1,150-mile return trip to Kentucky in between road rage, wrong turns and country music.
In the meantime, Bobs eldest daughter Donna worked through her grief to wrap up the many loose ends left when a family member dies suddenly, and Ann returned to her job in Loveland, Colo., where both live.
En route home, Ann stopped in Fairplay, Colo., to embrace the 21-year-old daughter of the woman, 41, who also lost her life when her car skidded out of control and into the path of Bobbys truck as he was returning from a nursing home visit to see his wife.
Soon Donna and Ann will bury most of their fathers ashes in the Colorado mountains he loved so much. The remainder will be buried on a rural, wooded Union County hillside close to his roots.
That Boxville-area site is marked today by a white wooden cross that once stood with others in Hendersons Central Park, where newer crosses stand majestically today in the annual tribute to veterans who have marched on.
Contact Ron Jenkins at ron.jenkins@insightbb.com