In Memoriam
Robert D. Bulkeley
Bob Bulkeley
1964 Yale graduation
Bob Bulkeley ’64 died on May 13, 2025. No obituary is available, but as remembrances we have reproduced his essays from our 60th Reunion Book, our 50th Reunion Book, and our 25th Reunion Book.
Essay, 60th Reunion Book
by Bob Bulkeley
May 2024
Bob Bulkeley
in recent years
After the 2019 reunion I looked forward to my last summer as a counsellor at Camp Pasquaney, and after that summer, visiting old friends, going to Tanglewood, things I could not do the previous 61 summers. Such would not be the case with COVID. In the winter of 2020, my wife Ouisie had a near fatal car accident brought on by the recurrence of a brain tumor treated in 1987. Surgery and a subsequent stroke on June 1 has reshaped our lives. She is making a strong recovery. Our three daughters, one living in Alabama and the other two in LA, have been magnificent coming to take care of us. We are comforted that they are in touch with each other daily and help each other when they can.
Our lovely home and woods compensate for what we have not had. It has been a time for much reading, a distraction from the mean-spirited and malicious politics that have poisoned our culture. One thing that gives me hope is to talk to campers and see how Pasquaney has been able to steer a steady course through all of this. I have avoided all social media, Facebook especially, to keep my life focused on what is important and true. As the world turns to more absolute rulers I think back to the Grand Inquisitor episode in Brothers Karamazov, and as I see chaos and uncertainty I think of Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and with the feckless politicians, Eliot’s The Hollow Men. Our lives have seen the best of days and I hope there will be others in the future. Keeping up with my oldest and closest friends fills my soul.
The climate change affects us here in New Hampshire but less than other locales. We mow less and let fields grow with bees, butterflies, and birds enjoying our home as we enjoy them. The bears are going to sleep and the birds are coming to the feeders. Life can be quiet and serene. May it stay so.
Essay, 50th Reunion Book
by Bob Bulkeley
May 2014
Since graduation, my life has been hallmarked by good fortune, consistency, and service. Increasingly, Thoreau’s philosophy has infused my daily life, sense of purpose, and spiritual outlook. Good health so far has been the rule rather than exception although I had to overcome my alcoholism in 1981 and Ouisie her brain tumor in 1987. In both cases complete recovery beat the odds.
A career as an educator spanned 32 years at Noble and Greenough and Gilman and years at Camp Pasquaney. That camp role, which included running the waterfront for 44 summers, has been most emblematic of our good fortune. To live every summer since I was eleven on Newfound Lake in New Hampshire, to have brought up my three daughters in a converted ice house for a full summer during their childhood years, and to have spent every summer there with my wife, Ouisie, since we were first married in 1971 has made my life extraordinarily rich and rewarding. Every summer, especially during my 32 years of secondary school teaching, my faith and trust in youth was renewed at Camp. I have had the privilege of working with some extraordinarily fine young people, both campers and counselors, and at my present age to see life through the prism of youth is a real gift, keeping my mind, body, and spirit seeming younger at 71 years than it might have otherwise been.
When we moved to Campton, NH in 2000, much changed. We moved from Baltimore City to a house on a dirt road and 105 acres of woodland. The night sounds of spring peepers, bears, coyotes, and barred owls complement the changing seasonal colors. My primary service interest shifted from helping alcoholics in recovery to preserving the land locally. That service has included developing a new Master Plan for Campton and working as a board member for the Quincy Bog/Pemi-Baker Land Trust. Cutting trails, designing pontoon bridges, and keeping a trail dry from beaver activity has been rewarding. I have also had the joy of working with the Forest Service on the Nancy Pond Trail in Crawford Notch and in reopening trails in the Mt. Cardigan area. All of this work is what my daughters refer to as “retiring well”. Hiking in the fall, skiing in the winter, and traveling during the mud and hunting seasons has become our life’s rhythm.
My political views have always been to the left on social issues, and by 2000, I completed a full commitment to democratic causes with the party of that name. Like many my age, I am increasingly appalled at the current path of materialism, greed, and deliberate misunderstanding that our country is taking. I see even at Pasquaney more campers measuring all things by monetary worth, echoing their home environment. Thankfully, we spend the summer talking about values, service, honesty, dedication, respect, and responsibility, and most important, bring these intangibles to life during the summer.
With my wife, three daughters, and four grandchildren , life has been rich and meaningful.
Essay, 25th Reunion Book
by Bob Bulkeley
May 2014
The past twenty-five years have had their share of surprises, joys, and sorrows, but it has always been clear that my four years at Yale equipped me well for them. The love of learning, fostered and nurtured in New Haven, continues to grow, and he intellectual values learned there have stood by me very well indeed.
While the primary focus of my life — educating adolescents — has not changed over time, it has taken some different turns., Had I been asked on graduation, I would have said that at this point in my life I would either be a headmaster or a scholar at some college. That I am neither gives me continuing joy, as either one would have taken me away from utilizing my one salient talent, working with teenagers. This all began actually before Yale when I started my career at Camp Pasequaney where I have been for the past thirty summers. There I learned the rewards of working with others, of serving worthy institutions, of cultivating the mind, body, and spirit rather than the pocketbook. The values I learned there and from my parents were given solidity and the opportunity to mature at Yale.
The jaded educators at Columbia tipped the scales in favor of secondary-school teaching, and in 1966, armed with an M.A. in English, I began to teach at Noble and Greenough. My innocence was soon shattered by the world of youthful rebellion with its long hair and drugs. Looking back on those confusing days of the 60’s, I laud the passion and idealism that I see sorely lacking today. I remain disturbed by the drug scene and general substance abuse that has too much governed the process of growing up. I played a crap game with the draft and won by turning twenty-six before the vulturous draft board in Hartford could nab me. I have no regrets about that either, as I know I did more good teaching than I would have as a lousy soldier. In 1969 I became an almost instant convert to coeducation and see Yale so much stronger for it. Ironically, I have stayed teaching at single-sex institutions.
In 1971 I left the bachelor life and Ouisie and I settled down for two years in Dedham before moving to Baltimore to teach at Gilman. Three lovely daughters — Tracy, Brooke, and Leigh — were born three years apart starting in 1974. I do not think anything I learned at Yale or as a teacher did much to prepare me for the role as a parent; I am equally certain that parenting must be learned by doing and all the books and courses available have tangential value at best.
Volunteer work has always augmented my academic and personal life. My involvement with Yale intensified when I became a member of the AYA Board of Governors which gave me many close contacts with classmates and kept me current on Yale. As an Alumni Schools Committee volunteer for the past eighteen years, as a class agent on and off over the years, and as the local Yale Club president, I have tried to serve the college that gave me so much. I have also been involved in youth activities aimed at dealing with the teenage drinking problem in Baltimore, helping start a Student Union where kids can hang out on weekend nights and a version of Safe-Raids in the Baltimore area. Currently I am working with the city and its Yale mayor, Kurt Schmoke, trying to get parent-support groups going, particularly in an environment where the family and the neighborhoods have lost much of their strength.
Reflecting on the past quarter century, I think that youth still is a vibrant, wonderful resource, but I am deeply troubled by the environment young people are creating for themselves. The biggest difference between now and when we grew up is that in former times parents were in the driver’s seat, their values and wisdom were accepted until late adolescence when the necessary rebellion and remaking of our own values took place. At present, the kids call the shots and the parents obey. The values our kids get are ones from the youth culture, and rebellion — including involvement with drugs, a deaf ear to parents, and a desire to be independent — comes much too early, somewhere around the sixth to seventh grades. The development of emotional and intellectual maturity seems terribly arrested now. As kids do not listen to elders, they bathe in their own culture with all its hedonism, materialism, and aimlessness. I see at Gilman and elsewhere an anti-intellectual environment, where kids are merely academically dutiful and are only learning to cope; the love of learning and the excitement of discovering the world about them seems to be vanishing. As certain as I am of these observations, I do not despair and see tremendous, and potentially rewarding, challenges ahead.
Counseling young people at school and in the community has been a most thrilling new adventure for me. For the past seven years I have been running our drug and alcohol education program at Gilman. That has rekindled my love of learning. Many conferences and contact with the health-care community have enriched my life. With all this reaching out to help others, I have constantly to remind myself that my first love and duty is to my own family; I fear being guilty of abandoning them to help others, leaving them for someone else to bring up. So far I think I have found the proper balance point.
In short, life seems busy and very good. Gray hairs and balding still lie in the future and I think I can accept whatever is tossed my say.