Robert Ferris, November 6, 2010

Published in Times Argus on Jan. 28, 2011

Robert Dana Ferris died of stomach cancer in Anchorage, Alaska, on Nov. 6, 2010. He was 64.

Born in Montpelier, the oldest of four, to Llewellyn and Kathryn (Herbert) Ferris, he attended schools in Middlesex and Montpelier. One year of his high school career was spent as an American Field Service exchange student in Graz, Austria.

In 1968, following three years at Yale University, Bobby took a year off to work as part of Volunteers in Service to America, the domestic version of the Peace Corps. As a VISTA volunteer, he was assigned to the village of Stebbins, Alaska, where he and his VISTA partner, “Koots,” worked on local education projects.

There he met the love of his life, Jean Frances Bernadette Bighead. VISTA regulations prohibited marriage during a tour of duty, so on the day following his discharge, Bobby and Jean were married.

Following one more semester in New Haven, Conn., it was clear to Bobby and Jean that their home was in Stebbins and they settled there, at first living in a tent, while Bobby built the log house that was their home ever since.

His early Stebbins career included crew foreman of teams fighting forest fires all over Alaska, as well as building homes and schools in the village. Most people came to know him as proprietor of the Ferris General Store and as freight agent for airlines supplying the village.

Over the years, he also served the village as mayor, chairman of the school Local Advisory Committee and a member of the Alaska Village Electric Co-op.

He had a lot of fun with the generations of children who loved to climb aboard for a ride on his freight wagon, and on him.

Though busy with work, Bobby always had time to talk to people and help them find ways to work out their problems. He established a program to encourage school attendance in the village, giving credits in his store for those with full attendance. He loved tinkering in his shop and discovering alternative ways to get things done. He was a good friend and a wonderful father.

He is survived by his wife, Jean, of Stebbins; sons Thomas Henry and his fiancé, Anna Sattler, of Anchorage, and John Henry and Jennifer, of St. Michael, Alaska; daughters Lucy Henry, of Anchorage, Patricia Henry, of Stebbins, and Krystal Ferris and Wayne Gabrieloff, of Stebbins; and one brother, Ken, and his wife, Hope Ann, of Montpelier; along with many grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by his daughter Diane and sons Carl and Christopher, and his parents and two sisters, Linda and Carolyn.

Funeral arrangements were in the care of his family.

Class Notes: Steven Schneebaum wrote: “Bob was my roommate, and my closest friend, during our first three years at Yale. He joined Army ROTC, not as a political statement for or against the war in Vietnam, but because that was what a healthy young man with talents and no obvious disability was supposed to do. Your report mentioned that he was a French major. But Bob came to Yale to major in engineering, again because that was what was expected: men were engineers. Men certainly did not major in French.

“Bob found out early in freshman year that he had neither talent for nor interest in engineering. What he was good at was languages. A year as an American Field Service exchange student in Austria had left him all but fluent in German, and he loved the complexity and the sounds of French, in which he excelled. Changing majors for him was agonizing, because it meant breaking molds that it was not in his nature to challenge. It meant contemplating a career very different from the one imagined for him by his family and teachers once they realized what an exceptionally bright student he was.

“I was going through the same process (changing from math to philosophy) at the same time; we agonized together. We were an odd couple: I was a city kid, small in stature, very young and very green. Bob was a year older than most of our classmates, and was well over six feet tall. But we shared a number of important values. And Yale formed both of us, albeit in very different ways.

“I visited Bob’s home in Middlesex several times, including the summer before he left Yale, when he was building a house for his mother with his own hands. He taught me to drive a car (I grew up in New York City! Who knew from cars?) and a motorcycle (even worse!). He visited my family and me in Queens. He dated one of my high school girlfriends for a while. When I agreed to cox the Trumbull College crew, Bob took up rowing.

“He was a voracious reader, with an amazing vocabulary and a depth of culture that always impressed those few who were allowed to know him. But he was the most unpretentious person I have ever known, to this day. Although Yale rapidly became a vital part of him, causing him to break the mold against which he had never rebelled before he came to New Haven, he was never entirely sure that he wanted to be part of Yale.

“After junior year, he joined VISTA, and asked to be sent to Alaska. To Bob, Alaska was a more extreme form of his rural Vermont roots, which he needed to explore further before he was willing to commit to full-time adulthood. Living there would involve physical hardships and service to others, both of which he relished. There he met Jean Bighead, an Inuit licensed practical nurse in Stebbins, the village where VISTA sent him. I still have the Polaroid photo Bob mailed me just after they met. She was barely five feet tall. They were standing out on the tundra, arms around each other. They married during Bob’s VISTA year. I sent him hops and yeast so he could make home-brewed beer for the wedding. They stayed married for the rest of his life.

“Bob went on to serve many terms as mayor of the impoverished and ignored village of Stebbins. He organized the village reindeer herd, arranged for the construction of public buildings, including schools, and founded the only general store in the town. He was a leader in every aspect of village life. Apparently, he and Jean adopted the (numerous) children of her siblings, who died young. Nine years ago, he and Jean were robbed by two local teenagers, reportedly high on glue. Both were shot, Bob in the head, but miraculously survived. He continued his career of community service.

“Lou Heifetz, who roomed with Bob and me during junior year, wrote to me the other day that Bob was ‘an oak … sturdy, upright, a reliable source of support and shade for family and lucky friends. … He was an unassuming exemplar of human decency. I can’t begin to explain this, but even though it’s been more than 30 years since my last contact with Bob, I feel a deep sense of loss.’ I do too. And I had had no contact with Bob for more than 40 years. I don’t know how those years passed so quickly and irrevocably. That is why I feel compelled to write to you, and to our classmates, and to anyone else who may remember Bob Ferris, to mourn his passing, and to celebrate his life and his role in ours. Somehow, the world in which I live has been diminished with his death. I am well aware that I would be a lesser person had I never known him.”

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