Bob Goodrich, the longtime recreation director for the South Bend Parks Department, died in late November at the age of 94. He was a dedicated public servant, an Air Force veteran and a great guy. Also a modest man, he didn’t need awards but he was given a Key to the City anyway.
Once, years ago, when I was at the recreation department’s headquarters in the Newman Center, a few of his young staff members and I started throwing around a shot put.
Bob was in his mid-40s at the time (really old to me back then) and he decided to join us. A competitive guy by nature (especially in golf), he figured he could at least beat the skinny version of me back then.
He couldn’t. I would out-toss him by five feet no matter how hard he tried. He chuckled about it but it was obvious that he was bugged that a little twerp like me had bested him. “So after I had a martini that night,” he told us a few days later, “I picked the olive out of my glass, took it into the backyard and heaved it at least 70 feet.”
He had a great sense of humor and we all laughed. His wife Marge didn’t … after I included his olive quote in a Tribune story I later wrote about Bob. OK, maybe I had mentioned that there was more than one martini involved.
A Kansas native, Bob came to South Bend from Indianapolis as the assistant director to Paul Boehm. Paul had made all the recreation programs in the parks, gyms and pools a special place for so many young people and Bob kept that legacy going for more than a quarter of a century. Paul Boehm has a park named after him. Bob should, too. Maybe with a shot put ring included in it.
God rest ye well, old friend.
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I’ve made it pretty clear over the years that I like numbers. I could have been a mathematician (or bookie) but my failure to grasp analytic geometry during my senior year in high school sent me on a different course.
But such things as baseball scores, miles per hour, ounces in a beverage and numerals on a scale still captivate me.
I also like measuring and predicting snowfall amounts. Fellow Tribune retiree Wayne Falda and I used to make an annual bet that would have us predict the total snow amount for the winter.
Wayne was sort of the Tribune’s weather expert and loved snow. He always predicted too much of the white stuff and I ended up beating him most of the time. Yep, I had his number. My victory would throw him into a springtime funk that could last until June.
My habit now is to venture out of our garage after a significant snowfall and stick a yardstick down into the snow to measure the inches that have fallen. Sometimes if the snow has drifted, I do it three or four times and then figure out the average.
On Sunday with the windchill well below zero, I may have measured one too many times while accidentally leaving the door from the garage to the house open. My teeth-chattering wife greeted me by telling me of another place I could stick the yardstick.
I nodded meekly, lest my days be — shall we say — numbered.
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I’ve had a little trouble watching football here lately. During the national championship game between Michigan and Washington, I somehow got on an ESPN alternate channel and the only noise was from the game’s public address announcer.
I kept waiting for the network to figure out which cable had been bent or broken so they could get the regular ESPN announcers back in the game. After almost a quarter, I discovered I was on ESPN2 or ESPNU or maybe just ESP (which, I guess, would have already known who was going to win).
Then this Sunday, I wasn’t paying much attention as I turned on the NFL playoff game between the Chiefs and the Bengals. It took me about 10 minutes before I realized that this particular game had been played a year earlier and was just filling a time slot after the Bills-Steelers game had been moved to Monday because of the weather.
Not knowing that the Bengals weren’t even in the playoffs this year probably should label me as a fair-weather fan these days.
When I was the sports editor of the Tribune, I would occasionally — or maybe it was often — get a call from someone telling me I knew zilch about his team. If people said that now, I guess they would be right.
And I’m OK with that. Scrabble, anyone?