He wasn’t at St. Paul’s long before he informed me that if we wanted to have a decent musical program we had to expand the balcony. I was thinking to myself: uh-huh. The congregation dearly loved their building, and I just couldn’t see them allowing some newbie to monkey with it. His response? “Watch.” So he drew up an architectural scheme to expand the balcony by anchoring an I-beam in the two forward buttresses and then cantilevering out to it. It all sounded sketchy to me, but what do I know about architecture? He and Candy also donated not a little bit of the cost. The long and short of it, he convinced the congregation! We have a spacious balcony (well, spacious compared to what it was!). The musical program look off. Soon we had timpani in the balcony (courtesy of Robert and Candy) and room for all sorts of accompanying musicians. He ended up being choir director for some time and taught the choir to sing “Joy to the Heart” (still one of my favorites). He loved to do what he called “production numbers” like that.
Charlie, Bob and I also played a bit of racquet ball together. Charlie and I mostly just ran after the balls as Bob consistently sent them into impossible positions to return. His specialty was having the ball land right at the front wall and simply roll back. He’d twirl his racquet in his hand and laugh every time he nailed that shot, and Charlie and I would look at each other and sigh in exasperation. After Charlie’s untimely death, Robert and I played on for a bit. But him and against only one of us was rather impossible. I remember one day when I was boring him to death with my ineptitude and he decided to give me a particularly challenging shot and said: “See Bill run. Run, Bill, run.” (You have to have been old enough to learn to read from those books: “See Spot run. Run, Spot, run.”) I was laughing so hard there was no way I could get to the ball. And there was the time I returned the ball so hard, it hit Bob in the back of the head. Yikes. He turned to me, his eyes closed, and he slumped down against the wall. He passed out! I was ready to call an ambulance, but when he came to, he opened up his eyes, got back on his feet, and insisted we finish the game. Which, of course, he won. He always won. Like always.
The man over the years had a landscaping business, a financial planning business (Cindi was his office manager for more than 20 years with that), a stone business, he flew hot air balloons, and he piloted airplanes. In fact, his last airplane he built from a kit in his garage. He wanted to take me up in it, and I flatly refused. He is generous to a fault. I remember when he moved his business to Troy, he purchased a year’s worth of box seats at the Fox Theatre, and whenever he didn’t need them for business associates, he generously let us use them. So Cindi, the kids, and I got to see numerous productions. It was way out of our league, but we sure enjoyed ourselves that year!
On the 20th anniversary of my ordination, the congregation surprised me by inviting Dr. Norman Nagel to preach. Dr. Nagel so charmed Bob and Candy, that they insisted we all go out to together to Bob’s favorite restaurant over in St. Louis: Al’s. What a delightful evening that was! The good Dr. and Betsy held forth royally and even when Dr. Nagel ordered an Australian favorite, they readily prepared for him, and he said it was excellent. Of course, we finished off the evening with Al’s famous Banana’s Foster! We were all grateful to Robert and Candy for the great memory.
And then there are his exploits with his long-suffering wife. Like when he decided she needed to get licensed for scuba diving, or needed to learn to play bag pipes, or whatever he happened to think up next! Candy came home one day to find all of her spices rearranged, put in alphabetical order! (Seriously?) And then there was the time she came home to find that he’d emptied her refrigerator (and right before a Christmas dinner) because he decided that the fridge needed to go to his mother! Life with Robert Esch is many things, but it is always an adventure and never a bore. It’s sort of “buckle your seatbelts!”
Candy was a popular teacher in our school: she loved literature and the kids she taught ended up loving literature too. She was one of those teachers that the kids just WANTED to please. They learned from her and respected her and she opened up new vistas to them. I personally loved the times we got to visit at the school after class. Love that lady so, so much.
In recent years both have had some significant health issues, and they finally decided it was time to move down to South Carolina to be with their daughter Liz and granddaughter Bella. So we went out for lunch, to remember all the crazy and joyous times, and to remind them that we have a guest room ready for whenever they come back this way.
Bob and Candy, we love you both more than words can say. And we’re really, really going to miss you both!
No comments:
Post a Comment