Bob Schwartz, a great big brother

 Bob Schwartz - off to the next great adventure - 8/9/2025

To TEH readers,
We've been going through the motions since June.  Some of you may have noticed.  
We gave Bob a send off a few days ago, and are starting to get back to work.  

Dessert at Maryanne and Bob's 50th anniversary lunch.

I've been thinking about this post for a month because I want to take a moment to honor Bob in my own way.  After a couple years living with stage 4 cancer, it finally got him.  If you knew Bob, you'd know that if anyone could will himself to keep going, it was him.
  

Outstanding in his field (his favorite joke)

He was rarely defeated and any loss ended in a better situation - even if it was just not always immediately clear.  He was my sister's husband, and when he married my sister, he married the family.  There isn't a one of us that he didn't swoop in and rescue a time or two.  Our mom, who raised 5 of us alone, breathed a sigh of relief for the first time in about 20 years.

Bob and Rudy patrolling the tree farm at the end of a day on the "frogmobile." 
It's green, and the farm is Frog Hollow, so it makes sense, right?

He was one of those rare people who say they want to do something, and the next thing you know, he was doing it.  Sometimes you got to go along on the adventure.  That could be travel, learning to fly, trying a new food, or plowing a field, raising game birds for release, or the renowned "box of ducks" and everything in between.  He was always up to something. 

Hamming it up at NASA

I don't want to be hypocritical, so it's been an interesting lesson that the things that made me love him were also the things that annoyed me. It took me years to learn not to ask for anything to be done until I was fully dressed and ready to get out there and assist.  Once the words were uttered, the clock was ticking, and within minutes I'd hear the frogmobile roaring up the hill. There was such a thing as "Schwartz time," and we were all living in it.  He was the sun we revolved around.  One just needed to learn how to navigate.  We're learning to work in the semi-darkness right now, but we'll get there.

Driving his restored Model A Ford always made him smile.
A-OOO-Ga!

He was driving a tractor and working in the fields while he could still show his age in fingers.  He was a tractor virtuoso, and so it was fitting that the last day he was mobile, he used a small ladder to climb on the tractor and retrieve one of the riding mowers from a sinkhole in the yard.  That same level of finesse applied to his years of hot air ballooning around the east coast.  He won contests in that balloon, because in spite of the fact that for the most part the wind is in charge, he learned how to work with it instead of against it.

Hot work on the farm in his younger days.

He taught me to drive after many had given up.  I was convinced I couldn't do it, but he was having none of that.  Later he taught my daughter to drive a truck with a manual transmission, and somehow she learned that there was nothing she couldn't do.  I'm not sure if the kids who had him in their lives know just how he instilled strength and capability in them. He never asked for anything in return.

Molly and her "Bobbo"

In his later years, he struggled with the results of strokes.  He learned to use his left hand, and didn't let anything stop him - but he withdrew from a lot of us.  In some ways, COVID gave us more time to be with him.  We were a pod here on the farm, and found ways to celebrate and enjoy ourselves in spite of what was going on.  When his cancer was diagnosed, we stuck together and did what we could to support him and keep him happy.  Mostly that meant a LOT of good restaurants.

There were a few wonderful, fun days between the hospital and in-home care.
This is when Maryanne returned from an appointment
to find that I'd served Bob a buffet of junk food - because
why not?

This past summer is a blur of hospital, home care, and inpatient hospice.  Through it all, he handled it like he handled everything else, his kindness and humor shining through to the very end.  

Thanks for everything, Bob.  You did a great job.  See ya around.