We could use a few more like Bob

Editor's note: The family of Bob Vermeers has launched a GoFundMe drive to help support his widow, Wanda. Read more about her situation or make a donation at this link.

Wanda Vermeers of Bremerton did something last Sunday that is hard for me to imagine. As her husband Bob pulled their car into the driveway of a home off Almira Drive that morning, he told her he wasn't feeling well, then slumped over in the driver's seat. Wanda struggled to pull his foot from the gas pedal as the car pushed into a garage door, then reached up and yanked the keys from the ignition, stopping the car and preventing further damage.

Bob had died suddenly, after 55 years of marriage to Wanda and 16 years of delivering the Kitsap Sun and three other newspapers daily, always with his wife. The driveway belonged to one of their customers, where Bob would typically walk to the front porch and drop the paper, just like he did at hundreds of other homes each morning.

Bob's death that morning was a surprise, but what shouldn't have been a surprise was the number of readers I heard from over the next few days. It says something that so many people treasured Bob, an 82-year-old Navy veteran and former instructor at West Sound Tech, especially in a day and age when delivery of a print newspaper has become a rarity. It's a reminder that we can't take it for granted. It was his dedication, and the personal touch he and Wanda carefully cultivated, that will be so missed. They were known for showing up every day, for leaving Christmas cards or notes that explained why a delivery was missed, and, in Bob's case, a spirit that frankly is inspiring to me.

"He was dedicated to that paper route," Wanda told me this week. "He felt that it was a shame the printed paper was slowly disappearing."

It is so important to remember that Bob, like our team of reporters, carriers and salespeople based here in Bremerton and the shrinking number of newspaper journalists nationwide, kept up the good fight, day in and day out. We need more people like Bob, both his belief in what a newspaper means to a community and, quite literally, to help us get the Sun delivered.

Bob never missed a day, his current distribution supervisor, Cherie Hart, told me, also mentioning the wonderful stories from his life he would tell. Another former colleague of his said Bob was known to have stopped in the middle of a route one day to rush to the hospital for an emergency medical need -- and when discharged went and delivered the balance of the papers.

Wanda said they would start work at 1 a.m. to deliver a route that once was as large as 400 customers, and included the Sun, Seattle Times, New York Times and Wall Street Journal, which would take until 7 or 8 in the morning. Nothing bothered him so much as snow -- because too much meant he couldn't get out to make his deliveries. That in turn bothered Wanda, who said their car would quickly fill up with two or three days worth of papers that had been bagged and prepped for when the roads cleared.

It's appropriate that Bob's favorite poem was "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost. The poem, which Bob often recited, is an American classic where the protagonist pauses his horses in an unfamiliar forest as the snow starts, then concludes, "But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep."

I can imagine a poignancy to repeating those words in a car stacked with newspapers, promised to those porches, as you and I rest in our beds before the sun comes up.

A few weeks ago, Wanda told me, Bob was walking to a front door to drop off the Sun and heard a cry for help from inside the garage. A 93-year-old man had fallen. Bob and Wanda called 911 and waited with him until an ambulance arrived. So some papers were late that day.

Alan Newberg, who lives near the Brownsville Marina, was on Bob's route for several years and the last house to get a paper before Bob and Wanda drove back to Bremerton, so his was occasionally late, too. Alan, who's retired, didn't mind, and said that meant Bob could stop and talk awhile after he parked in his turnaround point, the Newberg's driveway.

"He was dedicated to doing a good job," Newberg told me, while also confirming that delivery of the Sun did resume on Monday, with a new carrier. "We were always glad to even have a paper delivered."

Bob's memory was sharp, Wanda said, not only to remember the hundreds of delivery addresses and usually each of those customers by name, but also to recall people and even specific conversations from his upbringing in Grangeville, Idaho. He enlisted in the Navy and served 12 years on submarines, and he and Wanda met in New London, Connecticut. After his retirement from the service, the family -- four children and now two grandsons who he had a special bond with -- made several stops in the Northwest before settling in Kitsap County, where Bob taught computer classes, worked for the shipyard as a contactor and did some other odds jobs before the paper route.

A customer of Bob's on Bahai Vista Drive, a neighborhood on a steep slope in East Bremerton, once demanded to the Sun, "Don't you ever change my delivery driver," Wanda shared. "When customers care about you like that, it makes you happy you can deliver to them."

It makes me happy to know that's what Bob wanted to do on behalf of his community and our newspaper. This Thanksgiving weekend I'm especially grateful for him and Wanda, and all the others who do the same for the Sun, and I won't forget that example of dedication. Peace to his memory.

David Nelson has been the editor of the Kitsap Sun since 2009. Contact him at david.nelson@kitsapsun.com.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: We could use a few more like Bob