Robert H. McConnell

Thanks once again to everyone who came to celebrate Bob’s life. It means a lot to me, each and every one of you who showed up. Even though he was 80 years old, I still thought the man was going to live to 100. Robert Harry McConnell is my and Renee’s dad, the former husband of our mom, Rosalie, and the former partner of Sandy for 11 years. Bob was a man of many words. He loved to talk and tell stories, but when it came to how he showed love, he was a man of action. He worked tirelessly at his pizzeria, La Grande’s, to make it successful and to support himself, our mom, and his daughter, Renee. After La Grande’s, he opened Talty’s Bar with Dennis Talty, his friend since he was six years old. Forty-two years later, Talty’s is still in business today. In the ’90s, Bob was in his forties and wanted to become an Erie County sheriff so he could get back into the Tier 1 retirement system from his time as a mechanical drawing teacher in the city of Buffalo. He ended up accomplishing that, and I don’t want to BS it here: it was through his political pull, because he failed the lie detector test. The guys from South Buffalo passed him through despite all the gambling they used to do in the bar. They had also said he was too old, but because he was a Democratic committeeman, they talked to the people who made the decisions, and all of a sudden he became a sheriff. “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” my dad would always say. He worked in the Sheriff’s Department until 2007. My dad loved to rile people up. When I heard the story about choosing the Bills to win four Super Bowls, I assumed he would have bet against them and put it on the board that they were going to lose, because he loved to get a rise out of people. One time, Talty’s ran a bar trip to the season opener against Dan Marino and the Miami Dolphins, and the Bills lost. I remember he took me, his little boy, and afterward he took off his Bills T-shirt. He had a Miami Dolphins T-shirt underneath it, just to get a rise out of everyone. “I want to be associated with a winner,” he said, and he laughed. It was that chuckle where you wanted to be mad at him, but you couldn’t even be mad. That’s a Bob story. Another Bob story wasn’t all on the up-and-up. He was a ticket taker for the Buffalo Bills and an usher for the Sabres. When the Bills had their first game, they had these huge, sheriff-type hats. A guy said, “I’ll give you $20 for your hat.” My dad said, “Listen, if you grab it off my head and take off running, I won’t yell until you’re far enough away that you can’t be caught.” He did that so he could make a quick buck. He would take the tickets, too, and he was proud of this. I know it wasn’t on the up-and-up, either. He would pass them to his friend underneath the gate, they would resell them in the parking lot, and they would split the money. There were probably two people in the same seat when they got there. He also had bumper stickers made for whatever band was there, and he had a guy in the parking lot selling them. He would split the profits with him. That’s Bob: any way he could squeeze a buck out of anything. I think, because of his modest roots growing up in South Buffalo, he did what it took to survive, by hook or by crook. Maybe that’s a little too much information, but that’s Bob to a T. Bob was a bold entrepreneur, owning a window-washing company that worked on tall buildings while having a fear of heights. When he got the contract for the VA hospital, he realized they had safety stops on the windows to keep patients from jumping out. Those stops slowed down his work. He had the hospital administrators meet with him, and he said he took out the stops as slowly as he could. “Look how much you’re slowing me down,” he told them. They went into a room, came back, and gave him roughly $25,000 extra. He realized the contract was handled by a young woman in the office, so he took her out to lunch two or three days a week to make sure he got the next contract. That’s Bob. He told me recently why he had wanted to own a pizzeria, and I hadn’t known this before. He saw that the Italian men who owned them had Cadillacs parked out back. He wanted to be like them and have money. His father, Harry McConnell, whom they called Mick and whom I knew as Grandpa Mickey, told him it was a bad idea because he couldn’t even boil a pot of water. But Bob forged on, and he ultimately owned a bar in his native South Buffalo with Dennis Talty. He took risks. He put his heart, his hard work, and his smarts into them, making sure they would be successful. He was a hard worker when he had his own small businesses. When he got to the Sheriff’s Department, he said he was the best at doing nothing besides one other guy. That was his retirement gig, to make sure he had a good pension and got back into the Tier 1 system. I don’t want to BS you and say he was a hard worker for the Sheriff’s Department. He was there. He did his thing. But Talty’s and La Grande’s Pizzeria, he put his heart into. I learned a lot from my dad in my life, mainly how to show love through actions. These things may be boring, but I think they’re important. If the cable guy came over while I was at work, my dad was there for me. If I ran out of gas, which unfortunately happened many times because I would push it when I was on E, he might say, “What are you, stupid? What are you doing?” But he was there. When I had court for my speeding tickets, he was by my side. One time, I got a ticket and didn’t tell the cop my dad was an Erie County sheriff until after he went back to the car and came back with the ticket. Dad said, “What are you, stupid? Why wouldn’t you tell him before he went back to the car?” After that, I knew to do it right. When I needed a car repair, or any kind of repair, he had a guy, because he knew everyone. When I needed guidance or needed to learn how to do something in life, he would say, “This is how you do it, Bob.” He always thought he knew the best way. If somebody else gave me advice, he would say, “No, no, no. You do it like this.” He would show me the way or guide me to the right person to get anything done. Actions, time and time again, were how he showed love. He would rarely tell me he loved me. I would always have to say it to him. Sometimes I would get those words back, but most times his response was, “Okay.” “I love you, Dad.” “Okay. Bye.” I would always kiss him on the head or the cheek when we parted. He would reluctantly give me a kiss back at times, but I pretty much pressed my cheek into his lips to make him do it. My mom, Rosalie, once taught me something I always remember. She said, “Don’t ever be afraid to tell someone how you feel, and don’t be a withholder of feelings like your father.” I took that advice, and I’m the opposite of my father in that regard. I would constantly tell him I loved him, even if I didn’t get the words said back to me, because I was determined to share my feelings with him, time and time again, like my mom taught me. He wasn’t big on compliments, either. He would rarely say, “You’re doing good, kid.” When he did, it was an awesome feeling because he so rarely said it. I felt like he was proud of me. I would tell him, “Hey, I won my flag football league,” and he would say, “Did you win any money?” I would say no. Later in life, his sarcastic response became, “Did you win another T-shirt?” One time, I did win a big flag football game that was for money. Our league fees were paid for, roughly $600. It was at the Buffalo Bills field house against another local team, and a local man put up the money. The winner got their league fee paid. I remember being in Dad’s backyard and saying, “Dad, we won.” He had been at the game. I put my heart and soul into it. I remember helicoptering over for the game-winning touchdown. I dove and flipped over because you were allowed to dive in that particular game. I was so proud of myself, and my dad said, “You got lucky. The other team was better than yours.” That’s exactly what he said to me. These might not seem like the best things to say, but I think they helped shape the man I am today. In a weird way, I’m grateful for those things because I was always striving for excellence in sports, or whatever I had a passion for, to get his verbal approval. I rarely got it, but it gave me the determination to learn to do things for myself, not for his approval or anybody else’s. It made me determined that whatever I put my mind to, I could accomplish. I didn’t need anyone else’s approval, even though I yearned to hear it. It was for me. It forced me to be genuine and not just do things to make someone else happy. My dad went from being a paperboy to becoming a Marine, reluctantly, and I mean that with all due respect. We appreciate the armed forces. He never dreamed of being in the Marines, but he was afraid of being drafted and sent to the front lines in Vietnam. He signed up for what I think was a year, maybe two, with five years in the reserves. He went to a camp in South Carolina or North Carolina. It might have been Camp Lejeune. When we talked about the water there, I asked, “Dad, did you drink the water?” He said, “No, I didn’t drink water back then.” He was implying beer. He took a test to become a grenade instructor. He said he studied for about two days, didn’t know anything about it, and got it. I’m sure that was dangerous, and I’m sure the safety measures weren’t what they are now, but it was his way of not having to fight on the front lines. I appreciate all the men and women who did, but he was definitely scared of that. When he was in the reserves, he put down a friend’s address in Erie, Pennsylvania, because the Buffalo Marines were ground soldiers, while the Erie group were truck drivers, which was much easier. He didn’t live there, but he knew someone who did. He told me they did a practice mission with both groups. When they landed on the beach, he was sprawled out on his truck, drinking a Coca-Cola while the Buffalo guys he knew were coming up. He did it just to rub in the fact that he was with the Erie group. That’s Bob, always finding an angle, always finding a better way to do things in his mind. Mechanical drawing teacher, window-washing company owner, pizzeria owner, bar owner, Erie County sheriff: our dad had a lot of different jobs, careers, and paths in his life. Although it was a winding road, the one constant was that Bob wanted to make sure he and his family were financially secure. He took pride in his businesses and put a lot of hard work into them. He was the kind of man who worked his butt off his whole life and would proudly say, “I spent six dollars at Mighty Taco today for lunch,” because he saved a buck. He was always proud of saving money and having it. I love my dad with all my heart, my soul, and my everything. I’ve talked about his withholding feelings and rarely expressing them verbally, but there were a lot of beautiful traits to this man. He had a steady, easygoing demeanor that made people feel comfortable around him. I’m grateful that Renee and I got that from him. We have a lot of our mom in us, too: wanting to be in control and figure things out, along with her relentless intensity and passion when she put her mind to something. She was always telling me, “You can accomplish anything you set your mind to, Bobby.” We’re a mix of the two, and I’m appreciative to have had both of them as parents. Dad would rarely get upset about much. He would calmly go with the flow, wherever he was. One thing he was never shy about was expressing his opinion on how a restaurant, event, or business could be run better. In his mind, he always knew the best way to do it. Even though he wasn’t always right, it was a beautiful confidence he had. It was unshakable. I learned to love and laugh over the way he said things like, “If you can’t beat them, cheat them.” I’ll never forget our shooting competitions at the basketball hoop in the front yard. If I had a shot to win or tie, he would shake the pole. He had done a crappy job with the concrete, so you could move the pole almost in a circle. He would move it while I shot, I would miss, and he would win. Then he would walk away and giggle while I was crying, pissed, and wanting to play again. “If you can’t beat them, cheat them,” he would say, laughing at me. He loved to tease. Later in life, I saw the humor in it, including how he could be completely wrong about something and still turn it around on you. This is an example I made up; it didn’t actually happen. If he said the sky was black and you told him, “No, Dad, the sky is blue,” you could go to Home Depot, get a color wheel from the paint department, and show him that it matched. He would calmly say, “No, you said the sky was black. I said it was blue.” He would always say he had said the thing he hadn’t actually said. You would get frustrated because you knew he was wrong, but he would never admit it. He would giggle and say, “Nope, you said it. You said the sky was black. I said blue.” Then he would walk away laughing, and you couldn’t even be mad. That was his way. I loved that you could drop in on him at any moment, unannounced at his house or out in public, and he was always welcoming and happy to have a conversation with anyone. He loved to talk about himself. You didn’t get many words in edgewise, but now I yearn for those stories, those thirty or forty-five minutes when I might have gotten in ten or twelve sentences. I would start telling him something I had done, and he would say, “Yeah, so I had ace-king at the casino. I went all in, and I pretended I was senile and didn’t know what I was doing, and then I took his money.” He didn’t really care about what I had to say, and I mean that in a loving way. He wanted to talk about himself. Later in life, when I started calling him out on it as an adult, he would listen for a little while and say, “Oh, yeah, that’s cool,” giving me a little reassurance or active listening. Then he would be right back to whatever he wanted to talk about. That’s who he was. My only regret is that I thought the man would live to 100. I did, because he was never sick, and he would brag about that. He never had any severe health problems or spent a night in the hospital until May. Yes, 80 years is a long time to live. I know that. But I thought he would have 100. If I had known he only had 80 years, I would have been over once a week and made a point of having a Big Bob, Little Bob night: getting food and watching television together. Even though he rarely invited me over, I felt a little like the girl who liked a guy and kept showing up, while he was saying, “Yeah, yeah, whatever. All right, you’re here.” I felt like that at times, to use an analogy. But whenever I came over to watch Chicago Fire, Survivor, or Jeopardy, we would compete no matter what, and he would always say, “Thanks for coming over, Bob.” If I had it to do over, I would have made one night a week a standing date with him. Let that be a lesson to all of us about our parents. We don’t have them forever. We don’t know how long we’re going to have them. I thought I would have him for a lot more time in my life. Make the effort. Make the phone call. Not only the phone call—make the time. Just show up. I simply wanted more quality time with him because I loved being around him. He was my dad. Even if I couldn’t get a word in during our conversations, I loved being with him and having him show me love and attention by talking to me in his kind, calm way. One thing I don’t regret is the four-month period when Big Bob was in the hospital for 27 days in total. I was there every single day, for hours, because even though I missed work and some pay, there was nowhere else in this effing world I would rather have been. I mean that. You could have offered me a trip anywhere in the world, and I would still have wanted to be beside my dad, helping him, keeping him company, and fighting to find the best way to manage his congestive heart failure and kidney failure so he could have the best quality of life possible. We had a lot of helpers in our family. Aaron Roberts, being a doctor, helped us think about his medications and talk with the doctors. Dr. Ryan helped as well, and we appreciate that. I knew I shouldn’t be playing doctor, but I was fighting for him, whatever it took. Ultimately, those ailments won out. But one thing that shone beautifully through those tough times was the strength of our father-son relationship. I wanted to leave no doubt in his mind that I loved him so much and would do whatever it took to help him, every day, time and time again. If he had trouble breathing and said, “Get me up, Bob,” I would get him up. One day, it happened dozens of times. Whatever was necessary. One of my last memories of him is funny but sad. We had a decision to make. They told me he was dying, and no matter what we did, it was over. But I wanted the Hail Mary of dialysis every night because he seemed better on dialysis days. He was normal Bob and wasn’t in pain. I hired a nurse twenty-four/seven. It was my idea, but they told me he might have a week or two to live, maybe a month, if he did it that way, going in and out of the hospital. Before I had a chance to talk with him about all of that, I walked into his room and asked, “What’s wrong, Dad?” “My ass hurts,” he said. “They put the cream on it, but not in the crack.” I frantically went out to find a nurse, couldn’t find one, and went back in. The second or third time I went out, I heard him yell, “Get the ass cream!” What a moment with him. On Thursday, after they gave him medication to keep him comfortable, the chaplain came in and asked if there was anything I wanted to say to him. I poured out my heart and soul. I leaned over him and held his hand. “I know,” he said. “I know.” He said it twice. He heard me, and that made me feel good. I feel grateful that I got to spend those hard days in the hospital with the man who shaped me into the man I am today. As hard as it is to know he is gone from this earth, heaven gained a really good man. I hope he is pain-free now, hanging out with our mom, Rosalie; his parents, Mick and Martha; his sister, Sandy; his brother-in-law, Eddie; members of his Tim Hortons McKinley Mall crew; and his South Buffalo friends. I hope he is healthy in heaven, playing and watching sports. I heard some good Bob stories the other day about him playing sports, and it warmed my heart to hear that he got on people for not doing the right thing when he was playing quarterback in the streets of South Buffalo, because that’s what I do, too. I hadn’t even asked his childhood friend for a story or told him I liked football. He said, “He played quarterback. He played all the hard positions. If you didn’t do it right, he’d get on your butt.” That’s me to a T. I had him tell my whole football team that story. I hope Dad is in heaven telling stories about his life, healthy, playing sports, watching sports, betting on sports—which he loved to do—and making new friends every day. You couldn’t go anywhere without Bob knowing someone. Heaven gained a beautiful soul who could probably teach them how to cook the books, squeeze every bit of profit out of their business, and think through every angle of how to do it better. Renee and I love you, Dad.