Former principal left lasting impact

At our Jay County High School Class of 1984 40th class reunion held Sept. 7, Bob Anderson was invited as a guest of honor.

He was unable to attend, but sent a warm and inspirational message to be read aloud to our class.

I should have mentioned this observation to our class at the reunion, but I'll share it here with all of The Commercial Review’s readers, simply because Bob has touched practically all of our lives over many years. For the last 35-plus years, I have continued to perform military honor guard ceremonies for funerals of veterans. This entails folding and presenting the U.S. casket flags to dependents or widows and, of course, officiating over the firing of rifles of the honor guard. 

In this capacity, I've easily attended well over 150 funerals. 

For a lot of years, I would run into Bob at the evening viewings prior to the day of the actual funeral.

We got to be pretty good acquaintances.

For those who are unfamiliar, Bob was the principal of Redkey High School almost 20 years before Jay County High School opened in 1975.

Then, after we graduated in 1984, I returned to the school for Veterans Day ceremonies and he was still at Jay County High School well into the 1990s.

That's an amazing span of years.

He and I would sit in the lobby of the local area funeral homes and talk during the viewing hours.

Bob knows virtually every person who went through our Redkey and Jay County schools for decades. We would be interrupted constantly by people coming up to him to see if he remembered them.

And he almost always did, and would relate a memory of them that sometimes even they didn't remember.

I last saw him as the guest of honor at a Redkey High School class reunion about four years ago. He's still witty and alert, but the years are catching up with him.

Bob is absolutely a treasure of information and a truly magnificent human being.

My hours sitting with him and seeing how no one has a bad thing to say about him, and how practically everyone just remembers him with warmth, love and, most importantly, respect is a true testament to an honorable man of impeccable character. 

All of us were more fortunate than we will ever fully realize to have such a man of his caliber as a role model in our youth.

Bob, it’s been the honor of my life to have known you and call you a friend.