What can I say about Bob? He was a good and honorable man and I will certainly miss him. There are so few around in the world of work! He loved Judy and his family, beyond all else and always spoke of you glowingly, so you made his life so meaningful and happy.

Such a shock, what can I say? I know his destination is a better place, and here are some words that helped me recently in sad times.

(Written by Bishop Brent)

I am standing upon that foreshore, a ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength and I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says, “There! she’s gone!” “Gone where?” “Gone from my sight, that’s all”, she is just as large in mast and spar and hull as ever she was when she left my side; just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of her destination.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at that moment when someone at my side says, “There! she’s gone!” there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, “Here she comes!”

Thanks Nick for your kind words about my father, and the wonderful ship metaphor – such a fitting tribute to him. I know also the respect and friendship between you both was truly mutual.

I was very pleased to come to the memorial service last week. Bob was obviously very well liked in the village. In the GB based mineral exploration community Bob was very much a live wire, as Steve Thompson alluded to in his address. It seemed that several ideas flowed from Bob every day and we then had to sift the great ideas from the crazy ones. But sometimes the crazy ideas turn out to be the best.
I had the very good fortune to work for Bob in Co Mayo, in Swedish Lapland, [where he was Beowulf Bob], and also in the NE of Scotland. Great times and in the precarious and risky world of exploration Bob never even thought of failure.
His daily phone calls will be missed.