Fri, Jul 04, 2008
 Pages from Bob Dolezal's photo album kept by his mother, Clara Dolezal, show Bob when he was 6 weeks old in 1935. David Sanders / Arizona Daily Star
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Pioneer Landscaping Yard Person/Loader Operator Health Care FRONT OFFICE Administrative & Professional Tucson Symphony Teleservices Sales/Courtesy Rep Trades/Construction Paragon Electric Electricians Trades/Construction arizona portland cement maintenance electrician Trades/Construction Pioneer Landscaping Yard Person/Loader Operator General ADVANCED AUTOMOTIVE DISPATCHER/SECRETARY Accent'I'm sick today; I'll be sicker tomorrow'Despite worsening condition, Bob has a plan for his Neb. hometown
arizona daily star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 04.07.2008
Dec. 14, 2007
"When you're a kid, you say, 'I'm sick today; I'll be better tomorrow.' Now I say, 'I'm sick today; I'll be sicker tomorrow.'
"That's a line, Tom. Write it down."
Bob Dolezal, as always, is directing the telling of his tale, having formulated a quote that sums up the certain future of someone battling Parkinson's disease.
Simultaneously, he wages his latest crusade.
Bob's been on the phone most of the morning to officials in his hometown of Wahoo, Neb., trying to compile debt-ratio figures for the county and its municipalities — ammunition for his crusade to site the town's proposed performing arts center downtown, as a magnet for revitalization.
He wants to turn Wahoo into the cultural capital of eastern Nebraska.
While I'm there, he has a long speakerphone chat with a county official who politely explains to him that she doesn't have time to compile the info he needs. She has time, however, to chat for an hour about how much work she has to do and how tough it is to be her.
Bob oozes with empathy but he's making faces at her.
Bob has dangled a cash gift of up to $50,000 before the Wahoo city fathers and mothers as seed money for some things he'd like them to do. He's having trouble influencing things from afar.
Bob has helped rebuild much bigger cities, and this is a little frustrating.
Wahoo, Neb., population 4,041, is the government seat of Saunders County, whose population of 20,344 hasn't changed appreciably since Bob was born there on June 17, 1935.
It is, Bob says, "the best place in the world to grow up."
Bob's father, Louis, was a lawyer in a town and a time that didn't need much lawyering. His mother, Clara, was an artist, whose charcoal scenes of Depression-era Wahoo and oil studies of its farms and woods line the walls of Bob's apartment.
They weren't wealthy; they weren't poor. He remembers during the Depression when having a store-bought box of Jello was a big treat, but the family never went hungry. His father gardened and his mother canned. His grandfather had assembled a portfolio of real estate in Wahoo, and his family lived in one of the homes.
His parents lost a child, baptized Francis, who died at birth before Bob came along to be the center of his mother's life.
It explains his, how shall we say, self-possession.
"He's always been full of himself — only child and all that. Have you seen the albums?" asks daughter Lisa Smith on the phone from her home in Purchase, N.Y., where she and her husband, Alan, are raising Bob's two grandchildren, Sammy, 8, and Sydnee, 6.
Here is what the albums tell you:
At 4 months, Bob lifted his own weight by hanging on to his daddy's fingers.
Two weeks later, he began making the effort to sit. He sat alone at 5 months.
And, at 6 months, writes his mother Clara, "you responded to the word 'patty-cake' without the slightest demonstration on our part." In the black-and-white photo, infant Bob is smiling and clapping.
The chronicle of Bob's life continues in the scrapbooks of Clara Dolezal, through the first tricycle and the cowboy costumes, the basketball teams, the junior high football team that racked up 125 points while holding all opponents scoreless, the trip to Boy's State in Omaha, where the Wahoo Newspaper reported Bob's "remarkable performance," the envelope bearing his scholarship to Creighton University.
Bob suffered the usual childhood slights, which he remembered humorously in the invitation to his 50th birthday party:
"He grew enough zits to attract the town's first dermatologist. In the outfield, any baseballs that didn't roll through his legs, bounced off his head. The girls in Bob's high school class voted him 'most likely to improve.'"
The Wahoo idyll shaped Bob's life. Even the occasional slaps from his father at the dinner table are overshadowed by his mother's love.
"That's why my outlook on life is different, I think, why my outlook on Wahoo is different. The other kids had good parents and stuff, but this was an overwhelmingly good parent, far too good to die at 61."
Clara Dolezal died in 1968; Lou died five years later at age 66. Both had heart failure. His mom had high cholesterol; his dad high blood pressure. Despite that family medical history, Bob eats as many steaks and as much ice cream as he likes.
It fits his plan to live well and avoid a lingering death.
Bob's Wahoo friendships are enduring. In the photo of the eighth-grade basketball team, Jim Vanek, Leonard Lindgren and Bob kneel front row.
Vanek retired to Tucson and is a constant visitor.
Lindgren, retired to Indianapolis, spent two weeks with Bob in Tucson recently and accompanied him on a visit to Wahoo in October. That visit had two purposes — to find a home for Bob's mother's artwork and to convince the town that it should locate its proposed performing arts center downtown.
"I'd kind of get on him about his thoughts about what Wahoo should be doing," said Lindgren. "I said, 'If you want to do something for the good of mankind, do it in Tucson.' I keep telling him he's crazy, but he seems hellbent for election to try and preserve the downtown.
"I call him Don Quixote. He'll mount up his horse, put on his armor, take up his lance and go after 'em."
Sometimes he even topples some windmills.
● Contact reporter Tom Beal at 573-4158 or tbeal@azstarnet.com.
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