[Bob Friedman]
Bob’s Eulogies
One after another, we spoke,
And the common thread among us,
Bob’s kindness, his calm acceptance.
So many attributes besides,
Not overlooked, not forgotten,
But set in shadow, next to this,
His goodness.
[Colin Wilson]
Colin
He might have been a man aloof,
Settled in a lifetime’s success,
Knowing the value of his work,
Engaged as ever in pursuits:
Reconnecting shards into clues;
Evolving of the superman;
Always, the meaning of our lives.
He had to know his worth. Then why
The smile, the generous welcome
Into his world?
My old friend and business partner Bob Friedman died January 7, and yesterday his family held a memorial service for him at the auditorium of the Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) in Virginia Beach. Nancy Ford and I were among those who attended.
I can’t say just how many people were there. I learned as a young news reporter to count the seats beforehand, then estimate the percentage of seats filled after people arrived, but I didn’t think to use that trick. I’d guess there were maybe 60 people in the hall, but it might easily have been more. This I know: If all his friends who live far away could have been there, the place would have been too small. If all his friends living and dead had been able to attend, we would have needed a much larger auditorium. Bob was a man who made many friends, and kept them.
If, in addition, we had had all the people whose lives he vitally affected, via the authors he published, a large football stadium would have been too small. (Hyperbole? Well, consider the effect on society of just three authors out of the hundreds he put into print: Mary Summer Rain, Neale Donald Walsch, and Lynn Grabhorn.) His was a momentous life.
Yesterday at 5 in the morning, it occurred to me that I ought to be ready to speak in case I was asked. After all, we were friends and adversaries and friends again over a period of 32 years. For 20 years we built Hampton Roads Publishing Co. Inc. together, and after that, when he started another publishing house (his third), he published eight of my books. It was a long many-faceted relationship, much of it invisible to others, like our periodic lunches over the years. (Bob would come to town to play tennis, usually twice a week, and every so often he’d call and ask if I wanted to meet him for brunch at The Tavern, or The Cavalier, or The Villa. Our talk might range into history or literature or metaphysics, because Bob was an educated man, not a narrow-focus specialist. And of course there was always the world of publishing to discuss, or deplore. But none of this would be obvious to others, and perhaps it was nobody’s business.)
So I wrote down a few headers and put them on a 3 x 5 file card, which would have been more helpful later if I hadn’t left the card on my desk!
In the event, there were so many people I had known, and so many I had heard of but not met, including Bob’s first wife, Donna Reese. After an invocation and a buffet meal, we all sat and heard a succession of 20 people talk about various aspects of Bob’s life as they had experienced it. Twenty speakers: It sounds deadly, but in fact it was fascinating, as it always is when people speak from the heart.
Again and again and again, we heard of Bob’s receptivity, and his kindness, and how his helpfulness to others changed their life. Again and again and again we heard first-hand testimony to – well, there’s no better word for it – his goodness.
Goodness is undervalued in this world, as you can see by looking around you, but it is certainly properly valued when encountered. And that was Bob. I knew him perhaps as well as anyone beyond his family members, and I can say that in 32 years I never saw him do a malicious thing, never even heard him express a malicious thought. This isn’t just conventional “of the dead say nothing but good” rhetoric. It’s true. Not once. Bob as a business partner could be aggravating beyond all precedent (and I’m sure he would say the same of me) but I never worried about him acting out of malice. He just didn’t.
After we heard from the speakers who were listed on the program, Matthew, Bob’s second son, who was acting as M.C., asked John Nelson and me to say something. John was Bob’s first novelist, and the two had been friends since the mid-70s. John flew in from Hawaii to be at the service, and like all of us, could have told some tales, if there had been time enough. (Everybody has at least one Bob story.) He had to content himself with just a couple of anecdotes from their early years together.
While other talked, I borrowed a pen and wrote down a few talking points (a total of nine words) hoping to say something about Bob that hadn’t already been said, and more than once. At home, on that forgotten note card, I had intended to mention his courage and audacity in business, but I forgot that in the event. I was going to mention the reach and number and duration of his friendships, but that had been said many times. But I did touch on the other points and a couple more.
In no particular order:
And that’s a good note on which to end this over-long piece. Bob was a great man, and transformed many lives, my own not least, and will be fondly remembered.
Semi-accidental selfie at the Cairo Museum
For the past two weeks, I have been touring Egypt — I, who for ten years have been saying “My traveling days are over.” Three days in Cairo, a boat trip from Luxor up to Aswan, a trip into the Sahara to Abu Simbel, only about 20 miles from the Sudanese border — not my usual routine.
Although I have been drawn to Egypt from my earliest days, I never expected to see it. It was a very important thing to do, as it turns out (and as I never doubted, else I wouldn’t have gone), and I’ll write about it and post some photos in due time.
February 15, 2019 would have been Bob Friedman’s 77th birthday.
Poking around old computer files, I came across this photo of the very young Hampton Roads team with the co-authors of HRPC’s second book, Tapping Into the Force, by Ann Miller and co-author Maxine Asher. This had to have been taken in Las Vegas, in 1990, where I attended my first ABA trade show.
From left, me, Maxine Asher, Ann Miller, Bob
For someone of his reach and influence, Bob was surprisingly modest about his potential abilities. I used to say to him, “Bob, you could contact anyone in the New Age movement with two phone calls,” which was no exaggeration but merely a statement of fact, but sometimes he seemed to doubt it. Yet look at his track record: Our very first book at Hampton Roads — the book that returned our capital and gave us enough money to get us going — was Linda Goodman’s 1,100-page novel in blank verse Gooberz. Our second, Tapping into the Force.
Whose personal interaction got those authors, if not Bob’s? Certainly not mine!
I can’t help wondering, for the actor whose last role was Bob Friedman, what’s next. Hard act to follow.
Emerson, from “History” in Essays: First Series.
Some men classify objects by color and size and other accidents of appearance; others by intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of cause and effect. The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of causes, the variety of appearance.