St. Paul's Episcopal Church

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
425 Cleveland Ave SW
Canton, Ohio 44702
Phone: 330-455-0286
Fax: 330-455-9818
E-mail: office@stpaulscanton.org

Bob G. Pryse

September 30, 1919 – November 14, 2009

We gather today to celebrate the life of Bob Pryse. When I met with the family to talk about Bob and their memories of him, we laughed for about three hours straight. So, today as we pay tribute to this wonderful man, giggling is allowed!

Bob’s sparkling personality is what we will remember most. Forever boyish and mischievous, Bob never looked his age. Most of us are astonished that he was 90 years old.

Bob was born in Canton, attended Market Elementary School, graduated from McKinley High School in 1937, where he was a member of the swimming team, and went to work at Timken. Shortly after the United States entered World War II, Bob enlisted in the Army Air Corps and served nearly four years in the Pacific theater, as a technical sergeant and radio operator. He was discharged in August, 1945, and came home to his sweetheart, Helen.

They had met on a tennis court when she was 20 and he was 21. Helen remembers, “He was a great tennis player, and I wasn’t. The first time I saw him, I thought, ‘Va-va-voom!’” Apparently Bob had a similar reaction to Helen. When Bob was approached by the local radio station in a street-corner interview, he was asked, “If you were to go to a deserted island, who would you take with you?” Why, Helen, of course! Helen was a little embarrassed when she heard the broadcast. Bob’s mother wasn’t so sure about Helen – who was Roman Catholic and Italian. Bob was Episcopalian – he had been at St. Paul’s all his life – and who was this upstart girl anyway? Nevertheless, Bob and Helen dated for about two years before Bob’s enlistment, and then decided to cool it during the war. Helen said that if he came back, and she were still available, they’d talk about marriage then. He came back, and she was waiting. They were married three weeks later, on September 15, 1945, here at St. Paul’s. Daughter Kathleen arrived in 1949 and son Robert Sherman in 1954. Bob worked as a lab technician for Akro Rubber his entire working life. But that’s not what we remember about him.

We remember his resourcefulness, his good humor, his joking nature. Bob and his brother Tom were “bad boys,” always getting into mischief, especially at the church. The family remembers Bob standing on the shoulders of the rector, the Rev. Lou Brerton, for greening of the church. During the tenure of the Rev. Whit Dennison, Bob was especially active. His good buddy Carl Kiesling was the Junior Warden, and Bob was his first mate, working around the church two or three times a week. The family remembers one time when Bob and Carl were up on the roof with their tool boxes, repairing shingles, when neighbors called the police – there had been some robberies in the neighborhood, and those guys up there looked pretty suspicious! They had to call Fr. Lou to stand up for them. Carl and Bob were sort of a Mutt and Jeff team – Bob was small in stature, and Carl was big guy. Carl’s son Charlie worked with them too. Bob did so much work around the church that he often didn’t get around to repair jobs at home.

Church was like a second home for the Pryses, in many ways the center of their lives. Bob was active with repairs and projects, and Helen was active on Altar Guild, the Next-to-New Shop, Sunday School, ECW, and signing for the deaf congregation. They both sang in the choir – Bob had been in the Boys Choir beginning at age 8, and he continued as an adult. In fact, the whole family was in the choir, including the children.

Bob loved to argue with Marilyn Guster, the church administrator and keeper of the keys, about money for repairs. It was friendly banter, and they were close friends. Then there was the Bowling League – Helen and Bob were regulars, with Martin and Fay Alexander, Wayne and Jo Gerber, Bob and Shirley Pratt, and Dean and Margaret Howells. Among their closest friends were Harry and Dottie Kendrick. Harry and Bob would greet each other with, “Hey, Blue!” Bob would joke with Dottie and call her “Poor Thing,” apparently because she was married to Harry. The Pryses and Kendricks went out to eat together every week, played cards, and went to concerts by the Kendricks’ son Bill. They traveled to Florida together, and Bob made repairs at their home too. Helen remembers once when Bob fixed their gate, and Dottie was fixated on what he was doing – came out with a tape measure to make sure the repairs were exact. Bob fumed, “I’m never going to repair anything there again!” And the next week, he went back to help them pump water out of their basement.

The Pryses were very active socially. They belonged to the Co-Ed Club, a group of married couples who went to Myers Lake for dancing, and met in each other’s homes. Kathy remembers a Hallowe’en party they attended, dressed as Daisy Mae and L’il Abner, surrounded by an outhouse.

Kathy says, “My earliest recollection of my dad is that he was my hero. He could do or fix anything. If there was any crisis in the neighborhood, he was calm and resourceful – he knew just what to do. A neighbor lady accidently cut her leg with a sickle – Dad ran down, applied pressure to stop the bleeding, took care of the situation.”

Kathy remembers a funny incident too. She was seven years old, and admired a ten-year-old boy named Denny, who apparently was mischievous too. Denny climbed up a TV tower and got stuck. Kathy remembers, “We kids all just stood there, staring up at Denny, stuck up there in tower. My dad assessed the situation, then turned to us and said to the girls, ‘You, you and you – go home.’ Then he got a jar of Vasoline, had Denny strip off his clothes and grease himself up, and he slid right out!”

She remembers another time, when the children and their friends were swimming in a pool in a ravine. One of the children began to struggle, and before anyone else could react, Bob had already jumped in and taken care of the situation. Kathy says she always felt safe when her dad was around.

Helen says that Bob was always nimble, a fast runner, very active, and always busy. He would get up early and get busy. It didn’t matter if anyone else was still asleep – he’d be sawing and using noisy power tools. He often took on other jobs – painted houses, laid patios, fixed roofs -- always generous and willing to help others.

Son Bobby remembers that his dad was famous for practical jokes, and Bobby inherited this tendency. Bobby had to plot rather carefully to put one over on his father, but there is one famous incident in family lore. Actually, this joke went on for years. It began when the family was camping and met a woman who manufactured small filters for garden hoses – a white or black plastic ring about this big. It looks like this (hold it up). Bob looked at the object and joked, “Sure! I’ll take one. My hobby horse needs a new butt hole!” Well. Son Bobby thought that his dad deserved a little response for that remark, and so Bobby acquired a shopping bag full of the white filters, and started planting them all over – in Bob’s shaving kit, in his tool box, in the window visor of his car. Whenever Bob would open a drawer, there was another filter. It seemed like the filters were haunting him. Then Bobby started planting black ones. Everything Bob would open, he’d find another filter. This went on for 12 or 13 years, and Bobby never did confess the mischief. Bobby speculates, “He’s probably up there plotting to pull a big joke on me.”

In later years, Bob and Helen had a joyous fellowship with other parishioners who attended the 8 o’clock service. Mary Alyce Brokaw told me that she often went out for breakfast after the service with Helen and Bob, with Dick Dowding, and with Dr. Norman Lewis and his children. This circle of friends extended their morning worship with table fellowship at Samantha’s on Hillls and Dales, a tradition that went on for many years. We can imagine Bob, Dick Dowding and Dr. Lewis now reassembling their breakfast group on a higher plane.

Bob’s final months were not entirely happy, as circumstances dictated that he and Helen had to live in separate facilities – she at Nobles Pond, he at The Landing. Right after the big move came for him, I took our Sunday School class to see him and Helen, separately, on Valentine’s Day. He looked at the children fondly, thanked them for coming, and then told them wistfully, “I have lost everything now – my wife, my house, my car, and my dog.” The dog, a pug named Meggy, was taken in by daughter Kathy, and she brought her to visit Bob often. Yet the move was hard on Bob. He was not in good health, having suffered heart attacks, two heart bypass operations, and aneurysm surgery. His heart was fragile, and this last heart attack marked the end of his journey.

We will miss Bob. We will miss his charm and his joy, his industriousness, and his laughter and jokes. He loved this church, and the feeling was mutual. We have lost a major piece of our structure here, a big pillar in the community. Rest in peace, Bob.