My good friend Bob Jolly died March 20, 2016, just short of his 90th birthday.
Bob was interested in everything, which is the reason we first met, sometime in the late 1980s. Bob introduced himself at a reading by tradeswomen authors at Modern Times Bookstore in San Francisco. Bob’s daughter had chosen to go into the printing trade and, along with just trying to be a supportive dad, he was interested in the lives and writings of women in nontraditional jobs.
And so began Bob’s long association with Tradeswomen Inc. Bob volunteered to help us with Tradeswomen Magazine, and as a former English teacher he was a skilled editor and proofreader. Now, when I look at the old issues of the magazine, I cringe at all the uncorrected typos before Bob entered our world. Bob was also a fine writer and often contributed pieces for the magazine, from stories about his daughter to a book review about women lighthouse keepers to the history of women in engineering.
When I took Bob to dinner to recruit him for the Tradeswomen Inc. board of directors, the young waiter asked with a condescending smile, “Is this your father?” “No,” said Bob, “we are just friends.” Clearly the waiter didn’t think friendship was one of the categories a man and a woman two decades younger could fit into. But Bob and I really were great friends. Besides collaborating on publishing projects, we hiked and biked together all over the East Bay Regional Park lands where he volunteered as a ranger.
Bob served on the Tradeswomen Inc. board for many years, the only man on the board at that time. He maintained a quiet presence in the midst of energetic and outspoken women and we all loved that the one man on the board took on the traditional female role of secretary. Bob took great notes.
Bob and his wife, Connie, were members of the Berkeley Friends Meeting, the Quakers. A committed pacifist, he had spent time in jail for protesting the Vietnam War. He told me jail wasn’t bad at all and he met interesting people there, but he hadn’t counted on how traumatic it would be for his kids, who were quite young, to have their father in jail. He also worked with the American Friends Service Committee’s GI rights project advising men and women serving in the military about their rights. He and Connie were among the founding members of the East Bay Chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
We will miss Bob’s dry humor and clever puns. I was glad to see him the week before he died. We talked and laughed remembering old times. Connie testified that he was in no pain and was making jokes and telling stories right till the end. He died smiling.
Memorial services will be held on April 22 at 1:30 PM at Grand Lake Gardens, 401 Santa Clara Ave. in Oakland, and at 2:00 PM on April 23 at the Berkeley Friends Meeting, 2151 Vine St. Berkeley.
Contributions in Bob Jolly’s name may be sent to the following organizations:
AFSC “Peace Building/GI Rights”, 65 9th St. San Francisco CA 94103
The Wilderness Society, 1615 M St., Washington, D.C. 20036
American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, 39 Drumm St., San Francisco CA, 94111
Berkeley Society of Friends, 2151 Vine St., Berkeley CA 94709
tradeswomn musings 