Bob was born in a mountain valley in the kingdom of Bhutan.
His parents were Deist missionaries from New Jersey and as a youth the boy played in the shadow of the great Himalayan peak, Kula Kangri. There he learned the ancient art of Bhutanese coal carving and the deadly secrets of martial sarcasm. He was also home-schooled.
              Because there was little to do during the long Bhutanese winter, Bob eventually had twenty-three brothers and sisters. His Father, Maynard, and twenty-two of his siblings were tragically killed in an avalanche in the spring of 1961. They had embarked on a mission to rescue his uncle Morty who was photographing mountain vistas for National Geodesic magazine. His mother had passed away from exhaustion the previous autumn. As the family’s sole survivor, the King of Bhutan offered Bob citizenship and a place on the national water polo team. But the lad had grown weary of paradise and came home to live with Aunt Polly and Uncle Stewart in the hardscrabble town of South Stagnant Falls, New Jersey.
             Soon afterward the lad fell in with a tough crowd and began a life of selfishness and inconsideration. Some say he was never the same after his treasured collection of coal carvings was consumed in a tragic fire on a cold February night. Others point to his morbid fascination with clutch housings and experimentations with catnip.
            Then, in 1977 encouraged by an apostolic vision and a court order, Bob moved to Nebraska, where the air was clean and the football team almost always finished in the Top Five. He married a fine woman there and they had a dog named Dave. Today Bob, Ellen and Dave live on a barrier island off the coast of New Jersey and only return to the U.S. mainland to buy food and wine.

Here's a photo of Dave