Longtime Friend Follows His Father Home to the Duck Marsh

Bob Harris of Oshkosh is my only longtime friend I met through a father.

   I pause for a sad edit to the past tense: Bob Harris was my only longtime friend I met through a father.

   He died Saturday, July 25, at age 75.

   When I read Bob’s obituary, still numb with grief, I recalled meeting him in late fall 1988 when he interrupted my interview with his father, Richard F. Harris, in Dick’s big white house on Oregon Street on Oshkosh’s south side. Dick was a widower, and dying of inoperable cancer at age 74.

   Dick had retired several years earlier after a 36-year career with the old Conservation Department and the revamped Department of Natural Resources. I had been visiting him occasionally between mid-November and Christmas to discuss fisheries and conservation issues for an article about his 1956-1973 stint as fisheries director for 17 east-central Wisconsin counties.

   Though that was our intent, he also discussed religion, politics, piloting Navy landing craft in the Pacific during World War II, and dancing late into Saturday nights with his wife after rising before dawn to hunt ducks all day with friends.

Bob Harris of Oshkosh rows Patrick Durkin’s cedar-strip boat on the Waupaca Chain of Lakes in July 2008, with Penny Durkin, left, and Kathy Harris. — Patrick Durkin photo

   Anyway, when Bob burst into Dick's living room, he expressed relief to see his dad puffing on his old corncob pipe. Bob said he had been trying to call, but Dick never answered. Dick looked at the brick-sized mobile phone blinking beside him on an end-table, its battery spent. Dick apologized to his son, and said he had meant to recharge it, but I was distracting him.

   Bob laughed as my face flushed with guilt, and jokingly scolded his father for blaming me for his neglect.

   Dick died a half-year later on June 10, 1989. I was on my way to Des Moines to cover a conference, wondering how I could return in time for his funeral. When I called Bob with condolences, he told me to skip the funeral. “Stay at your conference. Dad would think you’re crazy to turn around and drive 400 miles for a funeral,” he said. “He sure wouldn’t do that!”

   Our friendship grew from there, especially after he asked if I still had the cassette tapes of my conversations with Dick the previous fall. I packaged and mailed the audio tapes the next day. Who could say no to a father whose two young daughters missed hearing their grandfather’s voice?

   My wife, Penny, and I stayed in touch with Bob and his wife, Kathy, after we moved our family to Waupaca in 1992. We met them regularly for duck dinners at the Century Elm in Larsen, perch at Wendt’s On the Lake near Fond du Lac, and some restaurant in Madison before a summer Concert on the Square.

   More often, though, we got together for “dinner cruises” on the Waupaca Chain of Lakes, with Bob and I taking turns rowing my cedar-strip boat after finding a quiet bay to eat our picnic meal while drinking beer and wine. Sometimes we rowed the main lakes among pontoon boats, and other times we rowed the upper chain among kayaks and paddleboards.

   Bob was a serious conservationist who liked hunting deer with his nephew and brother-in-law, and he was devoted to Trout Unlimited and flyfishing with Kathy in Wisconsin’s Driftless Area. At least that’s what we discussed while scrolling iPhone photos when meeting for lunch. He especially liked showing off Kathy’s biggest browns, and bragging about his pheasant dog, Lucky, even when its only feat was trouncing its teddy bear in the front yard.

   The best mark of good hunting and fishing buddies, however, is when you mostly discuss everything but hunting and fishing during get-togethers. Our discussions never lagged, whether it was four-way conversations as couples over dinner, or one-on-one jabs and insults while manning the oars.

   Bob and I never shied from talking politics, and agreed more often than not. Specifically, we agreed and disagreed on Walker, G.W. Bush, Obama, Doyle and Thompson, and shared the same view of Trump. Mostly, though, we agreed politicians worry too much about getting re-elected, fundraising for campaigns, and maximizing their influence. We wished they would focus on what’s best for our state, nation and people. 

   Maybe that’s why, despite our political differences, I got torqued at him only once.

   Bob was also a full-time, self-employed financial planner, and had the good sense not to risk our friendship by having me as a client. Still, he knew how to make a financial-illiterate like me feel good about myself. Over 30 years ago he told me: “It’s not that you’re stupid about money. It just doesn’t interest you. Besides, being a cheapskate is good insurance, and you’ve got that covered.”

   And then he’d roar at his own joke.

   Though meetups with Bob and Kathy grew rare after Penny and I moved to Eau Claire in 2020, Bob and I still exchanged emails, and Penny and I followed their moves through Kathy on Facebook. My last communication with Bob came in mid-March. He emailed to comment on a column I wrote about the DNR’s budget shortfalls, and was baffled why the Legislature hasn’t raised hunting and fishing license fees for 21 years.

   “Yes, yes! Raise the fees! Raise them a lot,” he wrote. “Not raising them since 2005 is crazy. For many years now, whenever I buy a license, I’ve thought how can this be so inexpensive?”

   Bob also said he liked a photo of mine in that column, which showed a young angler rowing my boat on the Chippewa River at dusk. His compliment made me recall a conversation with his father nearly 40 years ago.

   Dick had told me about taking Bob duck hunting in North Dakota when he was a teenager, probably in the mid-1970s. Dick planned it so he and Bob would approach the crest of a wide river valley from the east, preferably at dawn when ducks are most active, with the sun rising behind them, glinting off thousands of beating wings before them.

   Dick smiled when recalling Bob’s reaction at the scene.

   “That was something he’ll never forget, and might never see again,” Dick had said.

   I looked once more at the photo Bob had complimented, the one showing my rowboat angled west, pointing where the sun had set behind the Chippewa River.

   And I reread Bob’s note one more time:

   “Let’s get out again sometime soon,” he wrote.

   We never did.