Where's the Silver Lining?

The beginning

Robert never had an easy life. The second child of five, and the second son, he apparently wasn't wanted by his parents. The first thing he remembers his mother telling him was, "You brought hell to this family." Really something for a very young child to be told.

Since Robert was born with a club-foot, his parents took him to Children's Hospital in Oklahoma City (now part of the OU Medical Center) and left him for over a year. They returned to their farm in the Oklahoma Panhandle. When they came back to the city to get "Buddy," as his family called him, they didn't even recognize him. Now, his mother says that leaving him broke her heart. Sixty-five years too late.

Robert began herding cattle when he was about three or four years old. With his dog, wearing his father's coat because he didn't have one, the young child would be out in the cold and sometimes snow keeping the cattle from wandering away. When he took them in for water about the middle of the day, he might be able to warm up or eat. His father taught him how to make a shelter out of tumble weeds and snow, a type of igloo. Neighbors would come by and bring him hot drinks and soup, letting him warm up in their pick-ups. Thanks to neighbors, he learned what love is and can be.

He started working for a neighboring rancher when he was thirteen, but his mother insisted that she get his pay. Even so, he gained more than the wages he lost. The rancher and his family gave Robert the foundation needed to be a loving, caring man. I will always be grateful to Louis and Anna Meyer and to Louis' parents.

Robert's earliest memories include beatings and being deprived physically and emotionally. To his mother, his older brother and sister just younger than Robert were special, deserving to be given whatever they wanted, and they deserved an education. Robert was told he was too dumb to be anything except someone who worked with his back. Yet if someone had helped him, had recognized that he was dyslexic, they would have discovered that he is extremely intelligent.

From such an unpromising beginning a man who loves and cares arose.