Still being edited and polished…another update 5/28

School photo ca 2011

One of the last photos I have where he looked healthy.

CCNY School of Architecture

I have been asked by the CCNY Alumni Committee to create a bio and send a photo for the ceremony which will take place on June 10th. I couldn’t keep to the 300 words. Robert is not a 300 word guy.

[I read the page to him during a FaceTime call that came in as I was writing. He remained silent with no affect. I eliminated the parts at the end about his health.]

Robert was born in the Bronx, NY in 1946 and there he lived with his family, in his grandparents’ apartment along with an aunt, uncle, and cousins and a boarder: it was the end of WW II and there was a housing shortage. He said he loved to stand at the window and watch the elevated trains round the bend at The West Farms station.

The family moved to Queens in the 1950s to a co-op apartment. Robert attended PS 24, Daniel Carter Beard JHS and Flushing H.S. He attended Queens college for a year and then transferred to CCNY. While at “City” he achieved two degrees; a BS and a Bachelor of Architecture for which he had to stay an extra year. As Dalton Whiteside pointed out to me, he was instrumental in the founding of The School of Architecture and of documenting the events in and around the college in various newspapers. He left his priceless scrapbook to the school.

He got his Masters of Architecture in 1974 from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

Robert ended up teaching in The New York City School system for over 30 years and then went on to work in various private and parochial schools continuing his love and passion for teaching middle school science. He also taught science and architecture to gifted elementary students at LIU on Saturdays.

But, all that is just the veneer. Robert was, for want of a better term, a culture-freak. He filled our home with more books than it could handle. More music of every genre, favoring classical, in every format. He could identify just about every esoteric piece. He became tearful when hearing Mahler and was a card-carrying member of the Gustav Mahler Society. While teaching science he often played classical music for effect, especially during lab experiments: he subsequently produced students who went on to become doctors and music majors.

He was the selfless do-gooder who insisted upon recycling back in the 1960s before anyone ever heard of it. God help you if he ever saw you throw a can in the garbage!

Robert studied under Charles Alston at CCNY, and became a wonderful painter, despite the fact that he was very much red-green colorblind. He called on me to check and mix his paints. He could play the guitar and the 5-string banjo, he played and sang in a folk group. He taught himself how to play the autoharp, the mandolin, the dulcimer and for a bit, was pulled in by the concertina. He was a fine writer and observer and would frequently write poetry, beautiful poetry. Or send out a wonderfully crafted letter for business purposes setting a corporation straight. And any letter that was sent out from our house had an array of stamps from a huge collection: he’d add up the postage using many denominations, using beautiful older stamps, creating a collage on every envelope.

He designed and built furniture, he submitted plans for furniture and had it built. He redesigned architectural plans for a house that was built on Long Island.

He amassed a huge collection of travel maps from gas stations. To him they were priceless historical documents. We have an overflowing library of history, art, science, New York City.

He collected stamps and coins, ephemera, art, but perhaps one of his most famous collections is that of postmarks.

He was intrigued by them, but his strict father forbade him to waste his time, so Robert would send letters to post offices, all over the country, and request that they send the postmark to his friend, Carl, who lived way out on Long Island, from where he would pick them up and sneak them into the house. He passed this love on to his son, Evan, who inherited the collection and expanded it to over 10,000, via travel, archiving history lest it be lost when a little PO would be forced to shut down, somewhere on the plains or in small town America. (Evan has become the go-to person for this historical archiving and has been featured in the media in several countries, in books, newspapers, NPR, and even Time Magazine.)

He loved to travel: we spent nine summers in Europe in the 1970s to mid 1980s. He planned everything. He photographed everything. He journaled everything, making careful notes as to who took which photograph and sometimes what settings were used. Where we went, where we ate, all the details.

(I am in the process of cleaning out huge file cabinets of folders which) Robert created since the 1960s: word derivations, music, art, museums, people, obituaries, stupidity, languages. It was a never-ending collection mainly amassed from The New York Times which he read cover-to-cover-daily. Saving knowledge was important to him. Perhaps his favored folders were labelled food. A folder for every restaurant in every borough, for states, countries. He wanted to go everywhere and taste everything. If a restaurant opened, he was ready to go. He loved to eat!

He was one funny guy who never stopped talking, who was quick, eager, enthusiastic about everything and about teaching other people. People said: Bob knew everything. They marveled at him. You either loved him or hated him, or both. He was, as he put it, an analog guy in a digital world.

I read  to this point, eliminating what comes after, not sharing that I was cleaning out tons of stuff that will never be looked at again, it follows below. But what I did say, is that I thank you for taking care of so much stuff that I never had to do, mainly about finances. You said you were confused. You know what, Rob, so am I, we can be confused together. There was so much that you know that I don’t, that I depended on you for. Thanks for taking care of everything all of these years.

I could see that he was listening. His eyes were moving in thought. I told him I have his back.

And then I got choked up and began to cry. I couldn’t talk for a good three minutes.

The bio for submission continues:
[That was until about a year ago. Robert has been fading rapidly from neurological disorders which surfaced in 2014 and then ramped up during the last year. He got Covid from the facility in which he resides and it seemed to speed up his language decline. The person I knew is now, locked within himself, immobile, practically nonverbal. The foodie is now one hundred and eleven pounds.

I will, tell him about this honor, this appreciation that came, perhaps, just in time. I know that within him, there is a place where he does understand.]

Watch this…I am learning

📌The series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

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