My heart is heavy from the news this week that my Uncle Bob passed away at age 98. He’d been suffering from some chronic health conditions so I guess it is a blessing that he finally found peace, but it’s still hard for me to comprehend that he is gone.

Uncle Bob was a storyteller, jokester, nature-lover, and a man who marched to the beat of a different drummer. He loved camping and the outdoors and took delight in doing things unconventionally. His outfit of choice was boots, jeans, a flannel shirt, and a bolero.

An ordained Methodist minister, Uncle Bob was a preacher for a time who didn’t act like a preacher, but lived his life as a Christian with love, compassion, and respect for others. He was married my mom’s older sister Ellen, who survives him, for 75 years. They had five kids and a whole passel of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

As lovable as Uncle Bob was, it must have been hard for Aunt Ellen to put up with his antics sometimes. I remember her scolding him after someone fell off an ATV he was recklessly driving at a family picnic at one of my cousin’s houses in the country. She never complained about him, though, and they clearly loved each other very much.

His jokes were always corny and sometimes off-color. If Uncle Bob approached you at a family gathering, you had to be prepared to laugh at, or at least accept, his quirky sense of humor. That’s what you do with the people in your family that you love, right? 

I wasn’t prepared, though, for the time when he told a semi-racist joke to the whole family at a Christmas get-together with my son’s African American girlfriend present. I’m sure he wasn’t trying to be mean – or even racist. He was just being Bob.

I can recall hearing Uncle Bob preach only one time when I was a teenager. He wasn’t bad, but it was strange seeing him in such a formal role. Shortly after that he left the ministry. I think it is because he realized it wasn’t his true calling. 

After that, he seemed to drift a bit, but found meaning and purpose in his life by helping others when he and Aunt Ellen began traveling around the country in their camper volunteering at national parks and Methodist homes.

Uncle Bob and I shared a love of horses. He helped nurture this in me by organizing trail rides on our family camping trips together when I was a kid. 

“Hey, I’ve got a surprise for you,” he said to me one family Christmas gathering at his house in West Lafayette, Ind. “Let’s go to the barn.”

The barn was this huge old white structure right next to their house, remnants of a farm that had been turned into a subdivision. Inside was a horse.

“You can ride him if you want,” he said. I was probably 12 or 13 years old and my only experience with horses was trail rides and the old pony at my Grandpa Willie’s farm. He saddled up the horse and sent me off riding in the frozen cornfields near their house. 

It was so cold that I didn’t stay out long, but Uncle Bob had given me a gift beyond my wildest dreams that I’ll never forget.

A few years later, I got my own horse, really learned how to ride, and began showing him. After that, Uncle Bob and I had less in common about horses. His idea of horse riding was a gallop in the woods with the breeze in your face, not loping around an arena in a fancy saddle and spurs trying to win a ribbon. 

He couldn’t – or didn’t want to — relate to the horse world I’d stepped into. And I didn’t expect him to, but it did make me sad that I’d left my horse mentor behind.

I last saw Uncle Bob in October 2024 when I visited him and Aunt Ellen in West Lafayette at the senior housing complex in which they lived. He was frail, but alert, still telling stories and jokes.

I have no doubt that Uncle Bob told a joke to God when he got to the pearly gates. Maybe even an off-color one. Rest in peace, my quirky, funny, gentle uncle.