Bob's Memorial Service, Part 1

For the next few days I am going to put some things on my blog for family and friends who could not make it to the memorial service we had for Bob. Today I have the poem and picture from the little folders we gave out at the service.  I still have some if anyone wants one.  I also am posting the obituary. Cover of Bob's Remembrance Folder   A Cowboy's 23rd Psalm by William Kruse

Since the Lord Himself is my trail boss, I’m pretty well taken care of. He sees to my grazing and water rights and all the other needs of a maverick like me. He watches so that nothing bothers me much And keeps me well rested, for those hard times. He scouts the way ahead and leads me down the best trails. Even when the lightning strikes and the herd stampedes and I’m scared to death of dying, I’m not crippled by those fears Because, Lord, I know You’re riding herd. And that’s a comfort, that is. Then You go and throw a shindig for me and invite the whole county; even those who think I’m a scoundrel. And right there, in front of everybody, You pat me on the back and treat me like I’m someone special. You’ve got me drinking from my saucer, because my cup has overflowed. Since I’ve been branded by Your mercy and grace, those two will chaperone me my whole life.  When the long, long drive is over and we’re on the home range, I’ll be back in Your House, with You, Where I’ll just linger forever in Your presence and in Your love.  I sure will.  Marianne wrote the obituary and Matt Shuler read it at the service.  You both did a great job! Robert E. “Bob” Manville as he was fondly known lived a full life.  His life’s passion was spending time with those he loved and working with his cattle and on his ranch.  His quick wit and the twinkle in those blue eyes put people at ease and let them know they were loved even as he teased them.  He was a hero and a true cowboy.  On May 19, 2014 after a courageous battle against cancer, Bob went home to be with the Lord.  He was born in Walden Colorado on April 26, 1936 to Harry Manville and Marjorie (Forbes) Manville.  He was raised on the family ranch the only boy with four doting sisters.  Bob attended North Park High School where he graduated in 1954.  He attended Colorado A&M (now Colorado State University) majoring in animal nutrition.  He was active in the Greek System and served as president of his Acacia Fraternity.  Upon his graduation from college, Bob entered the United States Army.  His service was cut short when his father’s health necessitated his return to the family ranch. In November of 1959, Bob married the love of his life Penny Tyler.  They raised their 4 children on the ranch.  Bob was very involved in his children’s lives actively supporting: NPHS Sports, Cheerleaders, FFA, and 4-H.  He loved kids so much that he hosted many exchange students and was well known for “adopting” troubled kids and making them “just part of the family”.  Over the years, many kids from town, relatives, and boys from all over the country came to work as ranch hands during the summer and were mentored by Bob. Bob was service oriented and believed that it was integral to being part of a community.  He served on many committees including the Soil Conservation Committee.  He was active in the North Park Stock Growers Association serving as its president and was awarded Stock Grower of the Year.  He also lobbied for cattlemen on the state and national level.  He served as president of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association from 1982 -1983.  He was on the National Western Stock Show Board of Directors, as well as judging, and exhibiting there. He was elected as a County Commissioner and served Jackson County from 1980-1984.  He was an active member of the National Christmas Tree Committee. Bob loved hunting and fishing and enjoyed a number of trips to Canada to indulge.  He loved to fly and was the co-owner of a small plane for many years.  He traveled the world as an ambassador for the American Cattlemen.  He was among the first Americans to travel to China in the 1970s.  He also traveled to Africa, Egypt, and Singapore as well as all over Europe. In his semi-retirement, Bob lived in Owyhee and Wendover, Nevada during the school year.  He tried his hand working at a casino and found he liked playing the slots more than tending them.  He also did a stint as a long term substitute teacher and was voted “Teacher of the Year” by the students.  But every summer he returned to his beloved cabin where he would ride herd over his beloved grandchildren and other friends and family. Bob is survived by his wife, Penny Manville;  his sisters, Jane Crocket (Jack), Carol Jean Wofford (Bill), and Barbara Ann Tyler (Tip); his children, Marianne Manville-Ailles (Pat); Carla Jean Shriver (Jim), Jeanette Jones (Ozzie), and Daniel Manville (Kathi); and his 13 grandchildren and 5 great granddaughters. In lieu of flowers donations can be made to Central Wyoming Hospice and Transitions; 319 South Wilson St.; Casper, WY 82601 or Healthcare Foundation for the Yampa Valley; PO Box 883415; Steamboat Springs, CO 80488. To leave your favorite memories of Bob sign on to www.bustardsfuneralhome.com and sign the on-line guest book. Robert E. (Bob) Manville   4/26/1936 - 5/19/2014  Tomorrow I intend to have the eulogies written and read by two of our grandchildren.  They have fond memories of their Grampa from the many summers they spent with us at the Manville Cabin "summer camp"!  There is also a slide show put together by Carla to look forward to! Note:  The obituary on the funeral home webpage is done beautifully with a picture in the background and music!  Check it out!

A Farewell To The Love Of My Life

Bob Manville fighting the good fight!

This is hard to do!  Since last September Bob has been fighting a new bout of Cancer.  This time it had metastasized from one of his former 6 cancers to his liver as well as to some other odd places.  The doctors did not know where it came from but recommended he do a round of Chemotherapy and see where to go from there.

Chemotherapy at Steamboat Springs.

  Even though Bob had kind of felt he never wanted to do chemo, he was fighter enough to give it a shot. We were still in North Park so the chemo was done in Steamboat Springs an hour away over Rabbit Ears Pass.  The chemo was as advertised.  He was quite sick after each treatment (1 each week for 3 weeks then 2 weeks off for 3 rounds) and was just recovering as the next round started.  By the time the last round was done we were snowed out of the cabin and staying in Casper with Carla and Jim.  We would drive from there to Walden and stay with our nephew Hughie and drive back and forth to Steamboat.  One time we had to stay in Steamboat because it was snowing so hard!

Lots of snow to contend with.  This was outside the motel window!

  Another time the drive from Casper to Rawlins was so bad I couldn't see the front of the car for miles!  Poor Bob was miserable traveling those miles for chemo but he toughed it out.  The chemo was finished just before Christmas and the family celebrated Christmas at the cabin.  Shortly after we drove over to Steamboat to have a CAT scan and were told the chemo did not work.  Bob decided no more and we headed up to Carla's for the winter.

Bob and I at the Blue Shoe 5K race.  I came in 3rd in my class!

The residual effects of the chemo lasted for quite some time--especially the lack of appetite and weird taste of all foods never left.  By the end of January we had made a trip to the emergency room and spent several nights trying to relieve pain and anxiety.  We finally found a Doctor that recommended using outpatient hospice.  What a blessing that was!  I can not recommend hospice as a choice highly enough.  The nurses and support staff were wonderful and have become close friends with all of our family.  They are comforting, and supportive and tell it like it is, which we appreciated even though it was hard to take.  The first few months went by with Bob feeling about the same.

At the gardens in Bellagio with our great grand daughters.

 We took a trip to Las Vegas to have one last shot at the casinos and to be with our grandson, Micah's, family and our daughter JJ and husband Ozzie.  Carla and Jim went with us.  Bob was able to do a little gambling and the little girls took him for a walk in the wheelchair through the gardens at Bellagio.

Bob's birthday cake.  He was 78 years old on April 26.

Erin and JJ with Bob.

The flights were pretty hard on Bob.  Allegiant Air is not known for comfort--the seats don't even lean back a little! But he recovered nicely and we felt hope that a miracle might again take place for him.  As the weeks went by he did start to decline and finally we accepted that this was the end of the line for our fighter cowboy! On May 19, 2014 he slipped away to be with his Maker! We are deeply sad but know that he is at peace now.

Bob survived cancer for over 35 years and lived a good long life!

I will post his obituary and some of the eulogies his grandchildren and sons-in-law gave at the memorial service as well as the slide show Carla made for it, on my next blog posts.

My Latest Project--Recipe Books!

OK, I finally have something for the blog!  This is a recipe book I made for my grandson Thomas.  He has just moved out on his own and I thought he might like some favorite recipes from his summers visiting us up at the cabin.  I am planning on making one for each of the grandkids, personalizing them with pictures of them from "the good old days".  I may even have to change some of the recipes depending on their own favorites from those fun summer days.

Free printable recipe card made with Smilebox Now, former students, don't get excited thinking I'll make recipe books for you anytime soon.  I have 10 grand kids and 3 (right now) great grand kids!  We'll see how long that takes!  I'm thinking if I did do a recipe book for each school I taught at, it would be kind of fun but the pictures for North Park HS might not be as good as WWHS because I didn't have digital back then and so not as many pics--well comparatively speaking.  It's a thought' though.

Miracles Still Happen

Country singers entertain in the lobby. Annie's leg is in the foreground.

I 'm trying to think of an interesting topic to write about and not coming up with much. This morning a friend of mine that I first met online reminded me of how we met in person.  We arranged to meet at a mall and we hit it off immediately.  We shopped all day and decided our middle names were "shopping".  I guess I could write of my memories of shopping with my mom, Pug, but not now.

Carlotta Wheeler sings as her husband Bob works the music.

Another topic could be the story of Annie's roommate at the hospital.  It is kind of scary.  In the first place, Annie was supposed to be in a private room on the third floor that is devoted to orthopedics but ended up on the fifth floor which is an overflow for everything, I guess.  Anyway, it was very small and crowded with very little privacy.  The curtains that wrap around the beds didn't even work right.

They wheeled the lady into the room about early afternoon and she looked in bad shape. She had a big cut on her forehead, a big neck brace and a very swollen left arm. She was in a lot of pain for sure!  We ended up hearing her story a lot because she had a lot of company plus a lot of doctors who wanted to know what happened.

Her 26 year old son was driving her to work in his pickup. They were on I-17 just after getting on from the 101.  She unhooked her seat belt to reach in her purse on the floor.  She saw her son look back to his right and as he turned back she saw his eyes rolled up in his head!  He was having a seizure.  The car crossed two lanes of traffic and she was yelling at him.  At the last minute he jerked the wheel so it hit the cement median at a glancing blow instead of head on.  They did not roll and they were not hit by any cars.  A miracle on the interstate during rush hour on a Friday morning!  They were lucky to be alive. 

She ended up with a shattered L-1 disc in her spine with pieces floating around, a broken ball part of her shoulder, broken arm bones, broken wrist and broken fingers.  She has a long "Frankenstein" (her word) cut on her forehead that took 10 stitches.  She was bruised and whip lashed all over and her chest was very sore from the airbag.  She had spine surgery yesterday and was supposed to have shoulder and hand surgery today. Ohhhhh, when they moved her to take her down for the MRI my shoulder ached for her.  She was in great pain.

Meanwhile, her son was across the hall with a shattered eye socket, broken cheekbone, and some other bones in the face. I guess his face was hugely swollen according to the friends that stopped in to visit.  He also had some spine injuries. Many of his friends came to visit him and then dropped in to see his mother.

Remember this room was crowded to begin with and then the parade of doctors, nurses, and visitors was never ending.  We had been up since 4 AM and Annie had been through a 2 hour surgery so she needed rest.  I'm sure the poor woman did too.  She was in extreme pain and the medication was not touching it so they were trying ice packs and whatever.  She counted the minutes until her next pills!  It wasn't until 10:30 that night that the last 4 visitors left!  By then Annie was exhausted and knew the whole story word for word.

Needless to say, Annie begged her doctor to let her come back to the rehab center the next day and he finally relented so we made it back to the relatively peaceful quiet of the weekend here at the rehab center.

I hope that Tracie has a quick and uneventful recovery and they can relieve her pain.  I also hope her son,Travis, has a quick recovery and a good plastic surgeon working on his face.  They are so lucky to be alive and to be receiving great care at the hospital.

This event got me to thinking about how quickly our lives can change and makes me feel grateful for how my life is going!

Bob and Carlotta Wheeler

One Way to Idle Away An Afternoon

Here I am learning how to paint with watercolors on a cruise.

I am just a little embarrassed to do a show and tell on this story but here goes:

Yesterday the planned afternoon event here at the rehab center was "Painting With Cheryl".  Annie and I didn't pay much attention to it because we both must have had some kind of traumatic art experience in our youth and are definitely stick figure types  of drawers.  Annie claims she can't draw a straight line with a ruler and I just knew I had never had much formal training in the basics of drawing and painting.  It seems my early art experiences were mostly craft type things, although I do remember having to take some basic art class in college that had to do with the color wheel. There was also a class where I had to plan a house with all the furnishings and draw the outside elevations for it.  I pulled an all-nighter  on that, and my sister-in-law, Barbara Ann, had to come to my rescue and help me brick in the house exterior at the last minute to get the project done on time.

When I was on my cruise in the Panama Canal I got talked into taking a watercolor class with some friends I met on board.  We had a great time with a lot of laughs. I have to say the teacher was great, and I did learn a few basics, although my finished products certainly wouldn't win any prizes but were quite colorful. 

My friend Anasuya laughing it up in watercolor class on the cruise.

Back to Annie and I ignoring the call for the painting class.  About 10 minutes after the announcement a lady came to our door in an apron and invited us to come down and paint.  We both let her know we were not painters but she was not going to take no for an answer.  She told us she could teach anyone to paint and she didn't have anyone show up so we were it!  I remembered my friend Tory the art teacher in Owyhee and Wendover telling me the same thing.  I also thought about all the fun we had in the watercolor class so I ended up talking Annie into giving it a shot.

 

Penny's Work of Art.

By the time we got down to the rehab room where Cheryl had set up the painting table there were 3 others we had met on the way and talked into going too.  Cheryl had a painting she had done of the desert in fog at sunset that we were using as a guide.  It turned out that one lady was quite an artist and the rest of us were not.  We had a fine time and some good laughs.  It was very enjoyable and we got to take our pictures home with us.  Our families will certainly be fighting over who will get our lovely sunset pictures!  Cheryl did teach us some techniques and provided all the paint, brushes, canvases, and good advice while we painted.  I do think with the proper teacher I could learn to like to paint.  Maybe I need to stock up on supplies and go on You Tube........

 

Annie's Work of Art

On another note, here is something both Annie and I are much better at.  This is a recipe that Annie has made for many occasions through the years and people clamor for the recipe.  It is quite simple but delicious! 

 

This is more my speed.  I made some sushi on that cruise.

      Snicker  Cake

1 German Chocolate cake mix

1 pkg. Caramels (14 oz.) 52 caramels

1 stick margarine

1/3 C. milk

¾ C. Chocolate bits or just shake from bag if you like lots of     chocolate

1 C Nuts chopped

Mix cake mix according to directions.  Pour half of batter into 9”X 13” greased pan.  Bake 20 minutes at 350 degrees.  Melt caramels with margarine and milk in the microwave for about ten minutes checking often to see when melted.  Pour over the baked cake, sprinkle with chocolate bits and chopped nuts.  Dot with remaining cake mix on top.  Bake additional 20 minutes at 250 degrees and 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

From Ann Tenant

Sorry, I don't have any pictures for you of this cake.  But you can use your imagination all you Snickers lovers!

 

An impressionistic study in art class on a rocking ship.  HEHEHE!