This is going to be a bit up close and personal.
For the first time in my life, I am without my big brother. Robert Earl Yarbrough Jr. has passed away, and it still feels surreal. He has always been there. Had he not been, I probably would not be here today.
He was not my big brother by size or age alone. He was highly influential, like an extra parent.
Bob was a generation older, which suggests my arrival was likely unplanned. When I started grammar school, he was finishing high school. When I graduated high school, he had already graduated from college, married, and had a child.
What could we possibly have had in common beyond a last name?
The answer is complicated. He was a role model I spent years trying to emulate. I did not always do it well.
There was never any doubt Bob would be successful.
He was buttoned down from the start—quiet, disciplined. I was the bratty younger brother who once hid in the back seat when he took his girlfriend to the drive-in. He was not amused. He was even less amused when I pulled a similar stunt as he headed off to Florida with friends.
Still, he was forgiving. When I received disciplinary notes from teachers that required parental signatures, I sometimes convinced him to sign them because his handwriting closely resembled our mother’s. It always came with a lecture not to do it again. We both knew how that would turn out. “Just sign the note, please.”
It was a surprise to some when Bob decided to go to college. Our parents, raised in the rural South, never went beyond the seventh grade. Most of our extended family did not attend college, and some did not finish high school.
That decision, though, changed my life as well. As I said, he was my role model. If he did something, I was going to do it.
Graduating from the University of Georgia remains one of the defining moments of my life, but it would not have happened had Bob not gone there first. Had he become a mechanic, I would likely have been changing points and plugs in Ford Fairlanes right out of high school.
Bob entered magazine publishing in the mailroom while still in high school and, unsurprisingly, worked his way up to executive vice president. I spent time in broadcasting before joining Southern Bell, determined to climb my own corporate ladder. In some ways, it became a competition, at least from my perspective, and it created tension.
As a company spokesman, my name and face often appeared in the media, which was not always a good thing. Sometimes I was explaining corporate missteps.
Still, Bob’s younger brother was visible, and I think he grew tired of hearing about it.
Bob eventually moved to Chicago, where he became president of a trade magazine company. I went to Washington as a public affairs director for AT&T and later became an officer with BellSouth.
He retired and moved to Gainesville to be near his two daughters and their families, later serving as a hospital chaplain and working in a ministry teaching financial principles. I moved on to the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games and later into writing these weekly columns. We stayed in touch only occasionally, each in our own orbit.
Then things changed. After Bob lost his soulmate of 69 years, Bebe, and I lost The Beloved Woman Who Shared My Name, we began occasional phone calls to check in on each other. That eventually became a standing Sunday 6 p.m. ritual.
We called it the “no news call,” because we talked about nothing more than aches and pains, family, and our shared frustration with technology. The barriers we had built over the years came down. Competition disappeared, replaced by brotherly love and mutual respect. It is a memory I will always treasure.
I will miss Bob, but I am grateful I had the chance to tell him what an enormous influence he had on my life. I am here because he was there.
Thank you, big brother.
Rest in peace.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at dick@dickyarbrough.com or P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139.