Robert Hawley, my Uncle Bob, was more a force of nature than a mere person. They really don't make them like him anymore.
Even for being part of the Greatest Generation, Uncle Bob was something of a standout.
If I had to choose one adjective, I'd pick impish. Relatively small in stature, as I recall, but he crackled with energy and humor. But also a suave gentleman. In my mind a charming blend of Maurice Chevalier and Jackie Gleason.
I'd heard the story of how he'd started out as a messenger boy at The Harris Trust Bank and retired a vice-president. (NOTE TO FAMILY: Apologies in advance for inaccuracies. This is all to the best of my notoriously unreliable recollection. Consider this more of an impressionistic portrait.) He also served honorably in the U.S. Navy during World War Two. Because of this he didn't meet his eldest son until he was at least a year old (see note above). My brother also recently told me that Bob had been haunted by tinnitus since being made to stand on deck while the warship he was serving on fired its big guns.
Yet he played a beautiful trumpet, of the Great American Songbook style.
Visiting Aunt Kate and Uncle Bob was always an enjoyable window on a gracious lifestyle. They were of the era of the cocktail hour before dinner. An evening at their home might end with cousin Rick playing piano, Uncle Bob breaking out his trumpet, and perhaps a sing-along of Broadway musicals.
But this does not adequately convey his goofiness and joi de vivre. Bob lived to entertain. A sterling example of this was when my husband and I visited Kate and Bob in the beautiful home they retired to in Walnut Creek, California. Tom and I had embarked on an epic driving journey across the American West to San Francisco, and had arranged to stay overnight with them on our way to San Jose and Yosemite. They lovingly fed and housed us, Bob bemoaning the whole time the fact that we were only staying one night. He was such a host that the next morning he actually got up and washed our windshield.
We spent our enjoyable evening together watching a movie. I believe it was a circa 1960's era telling of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, complete with unspeakably cheesy special effects. As the credits were rolling at the end of the movie, Bob turned to Kate and deadpanned (in that inimitable Bob Hawley way) "That was a real stinker, Kate." A phrase that has lived on in Tom and my lexicon.
I do not ever remember him saying a truly unkind or, dare I say it, discouraged word. I say truly unkind, because I do remember him asking my mother if the dip she'd prepared (it was either hummus or baba ganouj; the 70's, man!) was plaster of paris. Kate and Bob retained their love and charm even after suffering the unimaginable pain of losing one of their beloved daughters. He also accepted his widowed mother-in-law as a part of their household, though he did goose her once mistaking her for his wife while she was bending over the tub giving one of the children a bath. An oft-repeated story.
Then there were his pet sayings. Among my favorites: "I haven't had so much fun since the pig ate my kid brother!", or, its cousin, "I haven't had so much fun since I got my toe stuck in some barbed wire!"
I also clearly remember my sainted Aunt Kate's vaguely exasperated sigh, "Oh, Robert!" This may appear when Bob was coming home from the store with an impossibly large watermelon to please his house guest, or trying to smuggle oranges through a roadblock during the Med Fly scare because house guests deserved home grown California fruit.
The best, though, was in a quiet moment, when family was gathered and all was well, Bob would look around and sigh "How sweet it is!"
How sweet the world.
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