A Loving Tribute to Bob Parisien from his husband Ray Eckhart
Bob was born on June 14, 1951, in North Dakota to Martin and Marie Parisien, the fifth of their 8 children.
He boasts a proud heritage as a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Native Americans.
His father died when he was young and his stepfather, Norman Engel, led the family slowly westward while employed as part of the labor force building the many dams on the Columbia, Missouri, and Colorado River Basins. Bob also has a half-sister and half-brother from his mother’s second marriage to Norman.
After graduating high school, Bob attended Eastern Washington University where he met and married Elizabeth Timentwa, the mother of his two sons Robert William and Joseph Martin and a member of the Colville Federated Tribe. While there, Bob was instrumental in changing the University’s mascot from “Savages” to “Eagles” along with fundraising to build a Longhouse meeting space on campus. He did graduate work at both Stanford University and the University of Michigan before obtaining a job with the Federal Government at the Department of Labor in Washington DC where I met him on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving in 1983, moving in together in May of the following year.
We legally wed on March 24, 2017.
Bob moved up in the ranks as a management analyst at the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs and finally, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency where he held a top-secret security clearance. While at FEMA, during a routine Congressional hearing, Bob exposed a misguided effort by an overzealous security manager to compile a list of closeted gay people at the agency, which became the subject of a 1992 Washington Post editorial and follow up article . Although being groomed for a Senior Executive Service position, Bob left his government career in 1993 to concentrate on his health, taking medical disability after a diagnosis of AIDS when his T-Cell count dropped below 200.
We did a lot of traveling over the years including trips to Hong Kong and China in 1989 (just before the Tiananmen Square tank showdown), Europe (1993), Greece (1994), and Egypt (1996). In 1997, we left the DC area for Blue Ridge Summit, PA where we realized a dream of opening a Bed and Breakfast which we call Monte Vista, the name given to the summer home by its builder, Martin Hawley in the late 19th century. We had a grand time renovating, visiting auctions and estates sales, and decorating using themes from our travels and life together, to create what we like to call our “lifestyle, not enterprise” venture.
Until the end, Bob had overcome multiple health crises in addition to HIV. He conquered non-Hodgkins’s lymphoma, colon cancer and kidney stone surgeries, as well as a neck spine vertebrate fusion to help manage the pain of rheumatoid arthritis.
During our years in the DC area, we attended the Metropolitan Community Church of Washington DC and after moving to Pennsylvania, a satellite MCC community in Hagerstown.
In 2002, we accepted the responsibility of raising two of Bob’s sister’s grandchildren, Tyler James Meyer, and Zachary Taylor Engel, then aged 14 and 12. Once they became a part of our lives, we started attending the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration in Blue Ridge Summit where the boys were baptized.
Bob loved watching tennis and golf, playing bridge and daily devouring almost every article in the Washington Post. He loved sniffing lilacs and ringing the bell of his 40th birthday “Objet d’ art” present during our morning walks together. He enjoyed mowing the lawn while listening to Diana Ross and I’ll be thinking of him every time I see his favorite flower, the gladiolus, bloom or hear his favorite hymn “A Closer Walk with Thee”.
I will miss him so much.
The family will receive friends from 5:00 P.M. to 7:00 P.M. Tuesday, May 7, 2024, in Grove-Bowersox Funeral Home, 50 S. Broad St., Waynesboro.
