Music • Photography • Writing
Later Years
Bob and Marge's marriage was strained at times, all the more so as Marge began earning her own living at SDC. Before Marge moved to California for her job, they decided the best thing would be to divorce so neither would feel like there was still something binding them together. The day the divorce was final, Bob married Bobbi LeMay, a talented singer with whom he'd worked professionally. Few things done in haste work out well. Bobbi's health was not good, because of her weaknesses as much as actual physical ailments. Bob and Marge sold the house on West Oak and split the proceeds. Bobbi's preexisting conditions prevented her from getting health insurance so Bob was stuck with bills that quickly burned through his savings. The marriage dissolved and Bobbi passed away a few years later.
On his own for the first time in years, Bob took advantage of his new situation by doing things he'd always wanted to try, like growing a beard, the first time he'd done that since the 1950s. The beard, grayer than he expected, didn't last long. Then he tried a small mustache along the lines of what his father wore much of his life, but it didn't last long either.
"Bish" and his cohorts Allen Uhles, Ron Eisenhauer, and John Paul Jones had been playing together for so long they were featured in an article in the local paper, the Gazette-Telegraph, the source of this photo. They were a very talented, versatile group and made many people happy with their music for many years. They never took a name as a group, since one night they might be the Rotten Hollow Boys, the next Luigi and the Paisanos, and on the weekend The Bob Bishop Orchestra.
One of the annual events at the Broadmoor Hotel was the Ice Show, held at the World Arena, then located just across the lake from the hotel and housed in what was originally an equestrian exhibition hall. The job called for both a pianist and an organist, since in those days the skaters all skated to live music rather than recordings. Bob played the organ and the lady pictured at left, Ida Hutchison, played the piano.
Ida was a classically trained pianist and her interest was mostly in classical music but she was versatile and a quick study. A member of a family with deep roots in the area, she was vivacious and funny. Bob engaged her to teach Julie the piano, since Bob just didn't seem to deal well with teaching. After Bob's divorces, he and Ida became very good close friends and spent a lot of time together. For more information about Ida, click here.
Bob continued playing, particularly the Golden Bee, where he still had the Sunday gig, as well as occasional full-time work filling in for other performers. The honky tonk piano, the hard hammers of which diminished the volume of the strings, and the loud noise of the patrons became a strain as the years went by, affecting particularly his thumbs and voice. He had also begun smoking in his teens and had continued to smoke his entire life, resulting in emphezema that required him to go out on breaks and use oxygen. But he was still a very talented performer. Tom watched him play a song Bob had never heard while the woman who'd requested it sang the melody in his ear. He knew thousands of songs but knew them so well he could no longer explain what chords he was playing.
Bob wondered sometimes how many photos he'd been in, since a lot of people at his gigs took pictures and he was always in the background. He also had regulars at the places he played, incluing at the Golden Bee. Here he shares a light-hearted moment with a man dressed in a kilt and a beret.
Never an avid gardener, Bob's strengths lay more in his sense of humor. For years the Bishops had had a brass spitoon sitting next to Bob's piano, though as far as I know no one ever dared use it for its original purpose. So he decided to put some potting soil in it and plant some flowers. What kind of flowers? Petunias, of course. Why of course? Because now he could call them "spitoonias."
Bob's cigarette habit finally took its toll on him. He smoked not only after he was diagnosed with emphezema but kept smoking until he was forced to go on oxygen. The only way to prevent more damage to his lungs was to take a drug called prednisone, which prevented his lungs from filling with scar tissue.
But right up to the end of his life, Bob never lost his sense of humor. Bob got his revenge in characteristic subtle manner when he named his colonostomy bag after the surgeon who had operated on him, a brusque man with a terrible bedside manner. Here he sports a Willie Nelson hat, complete with pony tail, as he sits in his wheelchair.
Prednisone extended Bob's life but it also prevented all of his other tissues from healing as well. In 1993 while on a trip to Glenwood Springs from Betty's house in Grand Junction, his colon burst. He managed to drive the 80 miles back to Betty's but they went immediately to a local hospital, where surgeons had to remove many of his internal organs to clean out what had come from his colon and then they performed a colostomy. He survived, barely, but the incision never healed because he still had to use the prednisone. Accepting his situation with his usual equanimity, he stayed with Betty until he died peacefully the day after her birthday in 1995. Ida very generously opened her house to us for the service we held in Colorado Springs and she even suggested that we could use the family picnic grounds by Monument Creek below her home for a place where his ashes could rest. When Ida passed away in early 2000, her ashes were placed near his. Here, Julie, Tom, Laura, and Betty stand next to the stone we used to mark his resting place.
