Bob Church was a father, grandfather, husband, friend, mentor and an avid writer with a strong following of fans. His blog, located at http://not-quite-right-bubba.blogspot.com/ serves as an archive of some of his best writings, numbered in the hundreds. Bob Church died of pancreatic cancer on Wednesday the 29th of April 2009. This video is a slide show of photos of Bob in chronological order taken from various sources. It was directed by the entire Church family and assembled by David Steinlage. If you would like a copy of this video on DVD, along with other videos that were shot at his 61st birthday party, simply email David at dave@davestechsupport.com

Bob Church, the father of my girlfriend Kristin, passed away this afternoon at the age of 61.  For the last 10 months Bob has been in a long and trying fight with cancer.  I’ve written a decent bit here and there about the history of this here and you can find it by following my tag link for him to the left.  He went peacefully while surrounded by family and close friends.

Among his dying wishes was the request that he be cremated and instead of having a formal memorial service, those who knew him should join together for a sort of commemorative party/get-together.  That event will be this Saturday.  So if you knew Bob and have a way of getting to Topeka, you are invited to come and celebrate Bobs life and the memories he has left with us all.

On Wednesday January the 21st of 2009, Bob and Louise Church celebrated their 26th wedding anniversary!  Surrounded by close family and friends they held a formal ceremony in their living room to renew their vows.  It was a very beautiful and touching event and I did my best to record the ceremony for the family and friends who were unable to attend.  You can click here to download the video.  The video is encoded in Xvid MPEG4 format.  If you’re running Windows, and it does not want to play, download and install the K-Lite Codec Pack which will add the necessary video decoder needed to play this video.

Following the ceremony, Bob was asked to open up a surprise package that had just arrived in the mail a couple days earlier.  Inside were dozens of copies of his new book (click here to preview and purchase your own copy) which was assembled by close friends of his who are part of an Internet based writers group (Word Catalyst Magazine) which Bob is a member of.

I of course recorded video of the opening of the package the books were delivered in as well as his initial reactions to the book.  You can download and view that video by clicking here.

Unfortunately there was little opportunity to capture the author himself reading from his new publication as there were some hyperactive grandchildren making a lot of distracting noise.  But don’t you worry!  I will be keeping on Bob to record a few readings from his book for his biggest fans to view.

Bob Church, father of my girlfriend Kristin, has published a new book!  Actually… his friends did it for him as a surprise.  You see, Bob has been a member of a little writers group on the Internet for a few years.  His writings have inspired and captivated many fellow authors.  But soon after the picture on the cover of the book was taken in the summer of last year, Bob was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Near the end of 2008, Bob and his wife Louise decided to move back from Moberly, Missouri to Topeka where their two daughters, their son and two grand-daughters live so that they could more easily spend his last days together as a family, despite their inability to sell the house they left behind in order to make the big move.  Chemotherapy sessions were already underway for two months when this happened and the move took a dreadful toll on Bob’s health.  Visits to the emergency room became frequent.  Seeing Bob awake and in a good mood was  rare.  And everyone was very worried.  Then, roughly a month or two after moving to Topeka, he decided to end his chemo after his doctors concluded it was doing him more harm than good.

Since that time his health and energy have seemed to very gradually increase.  We’ve spent several evenings together as a family watching the entire HBO series The Soporanos, one episode after another.  We’ve also continued this little tradition with another HBO series called Deadwood, which (all profanity and vulgarity aside) echos a lot of the kind of writing and dialoge styles Bob most appreciates. And just yesterday, Bob decided to whip out a laptop and get his ass on the Internet for the first time in nearly 3 months!  So for those of you out there who know Bob but live far away, you’ll be quite pleased to learn that his spirits have been the best I’ve ever seen in a very long time and it is a breath of fresh air.

Bob’s very own copy of this book will be in the mail and shipping to him very soon.  It is slated to make an appearence in about a week and I’ve been asked to video his opening the package when it arrives so his friends who cannot travel up can see his reaction.  Perhaps if I twist his arm a little, he’ll read us some of his writing, too.

The book is available for purchase from blurb.com by visiting this address.  Prices start at $13.95 for the softcover, $30.95 hardcover and weighs in at a whopping 400 pages.  You can even preview the first 15 pages of the book online before purchasing.  So go check it out!  Buy a copy!

Bob is a skilled writer of tall tales, short stories and beautiful poems.  I was honored and saddened to have helped him post his very last update to his blog yesterday, announcing that he has no further intentions of adding anything further to his collection of over 320+ writings that have accumulated there since 2006.  Even with the absence of fresh material he continues to gain new fans and inspire fellow poets who hope to one day write with the same kind of colorful essence and flow he’s demonstrated.

The decision to end chemotherapy came yesterday, partially from the doctors who have been working with Bob, and partially from Bob himself.  The cold truth of the matter is that these treatments are wretched in their induction of unbearable sickness, and the doctors feel at this point that continuing treatment of this kind would only do more harm than good.  They both feel that these final days should be spent with him in as best condition he can possibly be instead of sickened to the core and unable to visit with family and friends.  Regular secondary medications have kept the physical pain and anxiety he’s endured suppressed to a more tolerable level.  Unfortunately the medication he takes does little to suppress the same symptoms endured by all of us around him, and things are quite depressing right now.

So the plan is to make the best of things and try hard to not let our emotions rob what little time is left.  We’re planing on watching Wall-E today, a film I love so much that I watched it 4 times in the theaters when it was first released.  Being bed bound in the living room, one of the best things we can do with him is watch movies as a family, and a few other unique titles are down the line.  I’ll write more some other time about a movie Bob and I first had a very excited discussion about when we met for the very first time in person at an Olive Garden in Columbia, Missouri.  And I’m going to host it on my server for others to download without hassle as a dedication to him.  Speaking of Columbia, Kristin and I will be going there tomorrow night to see Nine Inch Nails in concert in an arena that is across the street from the VA hospital Bob’s chemotherapy treatments started at earlier this year…

Bob Church is the father of my girlfriend Kristin.  He will be celebrating his 61st birthday today and with quite a circus of friends and family around him (including my own parents and sisters).  We are all up here in Moberly, Missouri and it will be quite a day to remember (I brought the camera for the parts of the day I’m unable to remember due to alcohol consumption).  Bob has been diagnosed with multiple forms of cancer and has been on chemotherapy for the last 2 months. It has been a very difficult time for all of us who know him. The above picture was taken by me back in July while he, his daughters and I played a game of Spades.

His true passion, second to his family of course, is writing.  As mentioned before (and linked permanently to the left in my “blogroll”), he has quite a blog full of brilliant short stories, humorous tall tales and exquisite poetry that you can find here:

http://not-quite-right-bubba.blogspot.com/

If you didn’t visit it before, I encourage you to do so right now and leave him your best comments and birthday wishes.  And while you’re there, you might want to purchase a copy of this magazine that Bob has been published in:

Trust me, it’s worth the money.

As far as trends in technology lately… well, there’s probably plenty of stuff I could rave about but nothing much has really caught my eye enough to make me want to write something about it.  And I’ve been rather lazy the last couple of weeks.  To be honest, I’ve been a little apathetic.  And then, as so predicted by Joseph Campbell in that first Mythos video I saw, I’ve begun to sort of disengage myself from the rest of the current events in the world.  As much as I would love to possibly alienate you with my own political satire, I’ll spare you.  I really have a lot of other more important things to focus on for the time being…

As mentioned in my previous blog a couple weeks ago or so, my girlfriends’ father had been diagnosed with colon cancer.  Soon after I got to Missouri a discussion with an oncologist had took place, and the prognosis he gave was much more dreadful than what we were hoping for.  His cancer has spread to his lungs, and chemotherapy has been scheduled to begin next week.  His spirit and mood have remained high, odd as it may seem to some who otherwise might feel great despair and depression, if not anger.  But I perceive him to be living, in some aspects, the best days of his life as he proceeds to carefully squeeze the last few drops of it, savoring it with a grand smile.  It is actually hard to tell just how much there is left for him to enjoy, which is just the way things should be in life.  Disturbing prognoses be damned.

And of course there is plenty of room for optimism and hope.  I’m looking foward to future visits to help support him and the family that I am also a part of.  I’m also looking forward to reading more of his blogs.  By the way, if you consider yourself to be a literary buff who appreciates extensive vocabulary and vividness in the stories you read, do yourself a favor and subscribe to his blog.