Insight: Is this the party to whom I am speaking?

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Four years ago on Nov. 9, 2021, I was sitting at my kitchen table eating alone and wondering how events were about to transform my life.

Robert 'Bob' Boyd was an example of
courage and inspiration for Ed Pierce
and could imitate the voice of Kermit
the Frog. COURTESY PHOTO     

Just 17 years earlier, I had no idea that someone I had met recently for the first time while on a vacation trip would have such a profound effect upon me and how that person became an example of courage and inspiration for me.

Robert Stanley Boyd grew up in Winooski, Vermont and was five years older than me. I had married Bob’s youngest sister Nancy in June 2005, and I had not met him in person before flying to Vermont for a weeklong trip to my wife’s hometown that fall.

Entering the mudroom to the home in Essex Junction, Vermont where Bob lived with his wife, Jacinthe, Nancy pointed out a mountain of shoes stacked up there as wearing shoes was not permitted in their spotlessly clean home.

Despite never having met Bob before, he gave me a gigantic bear hug and rattled off a dozen or more corny jokes, followed by the silliest of laughs. We became close, and I found it fascinating that the lost art of sarcasm dwelled within Bob Boyd. He played the guitar during church services and knew all the words to the same songs from the 1960s that I did.

In fact, from the first time that I met him and each subsequent trip to his home thereafter, a music channel playing classic hits from the 1960s was always playing on his television.

He complained about everything from high taxes to the price of mandarin oranges and made sure people heard him. When large trucks started something called “engine braking” in front of his home while nearing his town, he argued before the town council to forbid such a terrible practice there. During our next visit, he proudly showed us a sign about a quarter of a mile away from his house that prohibited “engine braking” on that street.

Bob delighted in telling me stories about when my stepsons were young and how he gave their mom some time off and took the three boys out for lunch at McDonalds. With a twinkle in his eye, he talked about how the youngest, Danny, kept shoving straws into his cup until he had put more than 200 in there. While his brothers thought it was ridiculous, Bob played along with Danny and said if he wanted to do that, he should be able to.

Something I had in common with Bob was that we had both served in the U.S. Air Force. We had long discussions about military life and how Bob had joined the Air Guard instead of becoming a Marine like his two brothers.

I also thought is funny that each time Bob called to wish us a happy birthday or to say hello he would do so using a voice and snort sounding like Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the Telephone Operator from Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In.

In turn, each time we called him, and I got to wish Bob a happy birthday, I would always ask him how old he was on this birthday and then tell him he didn’t look a day older than he was yesterday. He would always chuckle and say to me “at least I’m retired,” even though he would have part-time gigs working for a funeral home or giving directions to tourists while manning the information booth at the Burlington, Vermont airport.

On one of our visits to Vermont about 2015, Bob told us that he was sick of snow and cold and was buying a home in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina where he could go fishing all year long. He loved it there and even flew Nancy down to visit him and Jacinthe one winter when she was on winter break from teaching her first-grade class in Maine.

About 2019, Nancy said she could sense some urgency in Bob’s voice each time he called and asked us to come and visit. We were soon to find out why.

Bob had been diagnosed with a brain tumor, and he underwent surgeries and treatment. His health declined and it was only a matter of time. That November day in 2021, Nancy was visiting Bob for perhaps the final time. Over Christmas week in 2021, I broke down and cried when I couldn’t find a Veterans Administration official to help Bob enter hospice care. I felt helpless as someone I truly loved was in such great pain.

Then on the morning of Jan. 2, 2022, we received notification that Bob had been admitted to a nearby hospice facility but had passed away.

This coming holiday season marks four years since Bob has left us and although he’s gone in many ways, I can still hear his voice or remember some of those stupid corny jokes he would tell. Or recall his silly impression of Kermit the Frog singing “Rainbow Connection.”

Every day I look at a photo of Bob on my dresser and imagine he’s out there somewhere laughing at something I’ve done. In that sense, he’s never left. <