One of the keenest judges of people I’ve ever met. They made up the expression “He did not suffer fools gladly” for Bob. Those of us who thought we were concealing from Bob our actual motives or the roots of our behaviors were generally mistaken. He could cut to the root of a dispute – he wasn’t always right but he had a sort of x-ray vision for personalities. There was never anyone better at diagnosing why people were doing what they were doing.
At the 1968 Democratic convention he narrowly missed being beaten by the Chicago PD. He’d tell of being one block ahead of the po-lice and the TV cameras.
Bob and Babs rode to California on Bob’s 1967 Harley, Babs riding pillion, with her high school graduation luggage set behind her, on the spring loaded seat – it was a big bike for a big man. And his girl.
Bob was always a bit of an outsider. He grew up in the upper South, then moved to Green Bay, where he was the new kid with the Southern accent, which drew a certain amount of unwelcome attention. Then he lost a bit of the southern accent and moved back to Kentucky, where his schoolmates called him a Yankee. He used to tell the choir when his vacation travels were going to take him back to the Midwest to see family, “So long, we’re going to America.”
Bob used to introduce himself by saying Bob Vinbeegler. It’s German, except every 40 years it’s Swiss.
I loved being one of the three kings in the annual Christmas pageant with Bob and Dixon Grier.
Bob called me one day in 1997. I’d only been a church member for a few years and Bob didn’t know me that well. He was calling because he was going to be moderator in 1998 and ’99, and he told me he intended to run and complete the Open and Affirming discernment process, and he wanted a vice moderator who would back his play. He wanted to know if I was that kind of person. Bob thought being open and affirming was the right thing to do and he intended to see that it got done. Bob’s the guy who got me involved in church leadership. (Please don’t hold it against him.)
Bob and I were on the search committee that served for two-and-a-half rough years, called a pastor who was going to come, changed his mind and decided not to, changed his mind again and decided to come out, then decided on the day before he was going to sign his home loan that he couldn’t do it. That led Bob Winbigler, Dick Long, and me to the big red church in Fresno to hear Frank Baldwin preach. We showed up on camp Sunday, a summer day only about 147 degrees in the central valley, kids roiling all over the sanctuary, everyone in church in short sleeved shirts, except for the three obvious out of towners in the back in dark suits and ties, looking like Mafia hit men who made a wrong turn. I remember exactly what Bob said at the time. I am not going to repeat it now.
In later years, when he was an at large member of council, or during our membership on the Orinda Senior Village board, after a meeting I’d often get a text message, “Got time for a chin wag?” Bob had something on his mind he wanted to chew over that he didn’t want to raise at the meeting. How many years combined did he serve on the OCC Council and on the OSV Board – two sets of six year terms on OSV; I think we’re talking decades on the Council.
I sat next to Bob in the bass section of the choir for 25 years -- I cannot repeat much of what occurred up there, but when Greg McCall, Bob, and I were visibly laughing it was usually because of something (sacrilegious? Intemperate? Inappropriate?) Bob had said. Of course, I can’t repeat any of them here.
OK, maybe one. Bob’s the one who called the animal hymn “God of the Weasel.” Every time it would come up in the rotation Bob would wait until just before we started singing and say, “Well, I guess it’s time for God of the Weasel again.” That’s why there was never a bass part in that hymn. The basses were all laughing too hard to sing.
Bob was in some ways a Biblical literalist – I’m a pretty allegorical Christian, which Bob considered to be weak soup. As far as he was concerned the phrase Christ is risen meant exactly that. He believed in the Christ of the sermon on the mount, the Christ who cared for the meek, the poor, the marginalized, the dispossessed. He was a New Testament Christian.
He taught Sunday School because he considered it to be his obligation to work with young people. He eschewed the modern curriculum and instead taught what he thought it was important the kids learned – courtesy, respect, kindness – what it means to be a follower of Jesus – Protestant religious history – what he thought about the psalms. My kids loved Bob, and when Carson and Cooper had the pulpit for their graduation Sunday Cooper singled out Bob’s pedagogy as meaningful to him, which is one of the only times I saw Bob cry in church. (I on the other hand – but who’s keeping score?)
He liked a good cigar, and would bring a few stogies to Yosemite for the church’s retreat weekend, and we’d sneak off for a few puffs and a chin wag. We had to stop because our kids were at the age where they were afraid if we smoked a cigar we might expire right there in the clearing.
He had a unique sense of humor – the raised eyebrows, the side eye glance – if you listen even a little bit you can hear Bob’s voice in Kurt and Kate, both of whom he absolutely adored. Man could he tell a joke. He was the master of the shaggy dog story – the violin lesson (probably), the revival meeting down by the river – neither of which I can repeat here. If I did you’d respond with one of his punchlines – I don’t believe I’d’a tole that. I could probably tell the one about the pig with a wooden leg . . . but not like Bob could.
He liked Western movies and country music, and his knowledge of both genres was encyclopedic. He urged me to play Marty Robbins records when David Milnes was over for dinner so Bob could ask David in mock outrage, “how is it a feller like you who knows so much about music doesn’t know Marty Robbins?”
He was a big man with a big personality and a heart to fit.
There was so much more I had to talk about with Bob. My only consolation is that in the sweet by and by, where we live in the peace that passes all understanding, we can pick up the conversation where we left off.
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