Beloved Route 66 artist Bob Waldmire died several weeks ago, but the accolades are still coming in. The latest came today from Mark Yost, writing for the Wall Street Journal.
A choice excerpt, part of which I witnessed:
These were the people who showed up at the Cozy Dog in mid-November for “Bob’s Last Art Show,” part tribute and part fund-raiser. People like Ron Jones, 61, who drove eight hours from Bartlesville, Okla., for the event. He first met Waldmire 10 years ago at a visitors’ center in Arizona.
Mr. Jones is himself one of the highway’s famous personalities. His body is covered with tattoos of Route 66 sites such as the Rock Café in Stroud, Okla. […]
These are just a few of the hundreds of people who crowded into the Cozy Dog for Bob’s Last Art Show, and the common themes were a love of the man and his love for the road.
“Once you get to know Bob, you realize what an ambassador for the road he is,” Mr. Jones said that day in November. “You think he’s going to be around forever.”
But when Waldmire showed up, it was clear that he would not be. He was frail, emaciated, and the cancer had turned his skin as yellow as a legal pad. When Mr. Jones first saw him, he broke down in tears and fell to his knees. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
A woman standing nearby, who’d never met either man but came here to celebrate Waldmire’s life, came over and said, “Can I give you a hug?”
That’s the kind of communal spirit that Waldmire instilled in others, right up to the day he died.