Excerpt: An Introduction to Bobbie
Two things stand out about Bobbie's life above all else: her love of her friends and family and the importance of her relationship with Tom. Bobbie was a community activist and neighborhood organizer before those terms ever became in vogue. She wanted her neighborhood to be a community, and she made it happen: initiating and throwing parties, striking up conversations with newly moved-in neighbors, and deepening acquaintances to become friendships. She wanted to live where those around her were like family; a place where people know each other and keep an eye on each other and help each other. To her, a quiet suburb where people drive into their garages and go directly into their houses every night, then turn around and do the reverse the next morning, would not suit. She wanted to know the people who lived around her, to be able to trust them; and she wanted them to want the same thing. It was frustrating for her when someone new would move in who did not want the same level of commitment to friendship that she seemed to need and want. She was the hub, the mother, the connector. It hurt her when people rejected this role she had put on herself.
But when things worked – ah, that was the stuff! One of Bobbie's best friends Rick said at Bobbie's memorial service, “For those of you that know me well, you know that there were two girls in my life: Jackie and Bobbie. So when the time came to make a pilgrimage to the Jackie Kennedy exhibit in Boston, all I needed to do was pick up that phone, and Bobbie was in.” Bobbie and Tom threw a New Year's Eve party on December 31, 1999, and insisted that everyone wear black tie and formal wear. It was a catered affair, and their friend and neighbor David said, “I bet it was one of the best parties anywhere that night.” To Bobbie, going all out for an event was not bothersome or annoying; she relished being the hostess, making people comfortable in her home, and creating a space and an ambiance that would leave everyone thinking and saying, “Wow!” This was not done to be pretentious and she was not in the least stuck-up. She wanted to create something memorable that people, years later, would say, “Do you remember when Bobbie and Tom threw that party...?” “Oh, yeah, wasn't that great?” She wanted to provide an experience for people who she loved and cared about. Charlie, Bobbie's stepsister's fiancé, recalled coming to Bobbie and Tom's house every year for Christmas. He described Bobbie's attention to detail: “[Everything was] perfect. The napkins, the way the knives were looking, everything, the food.... You thought you were in ... a great restaurant, I mean it was like unbelievable, everything was beautiful, the setting was just amazing. She went out of her way to please people.”
Bobbie's relationship with Tom was the single most important thing in her life. In the interviews conducted for this book, everyone, usually spontaneously, remarked on how important Tom was to Bobbie. Rick said, “[Bobbie] really appreciated what she had, and realized how lucky she was.” Their neighbor Susie told Tom, “I felt that you all were each other's best buddy.... You were dancing the same dance together. You were dancing the same dance. You were each other's family. You didn't have children. You were each other's family, and it was a love story.”
Other people looked up to them as a role model for how to get along as a couple. Xhilda, one of Bobbie's friends at work, emphasized this: “[Bobbie] was a good tutor for me as far as relationships are concerned, and marriage. She was the person that I could see love her husband the way that I would want to love my husband here and 25 years from now.” Tom was at first surprised, and then pleased, to learn that others thought of his marriage with Bobbie as a model.
