Obituary of Robert "Bob" Siegel

Robert Howard Siegel

September 25, 1937 – April 27, 2024

Robert “Bob” Siegel was born in Chicago, Illinois, on September 25, 1937, to Violet “Babe” Greenberg and LeRoy Winer.  Bob’s parents divorced soon after, and Babe moved with her infant son into her parents’ one-bedroom apartment on Clyde Street.  Bob’s grandparents took the bedroom, Babe had the Murphy bed in the living room, and Bob slept on a trundle bed in the dining room.  They were tight but loving quarters.  Once a year, Bob’s grandmother would bring home a live fish from the market and put it in the bathtub until she was ready to make gefilte fish for Passover.  Bob always said the smell was terrible but the final product was delicious.

When Bob was still a boy, his mother fell in love with a kind-hearted jeweler named Victor Siegel.  When Vic proposed to Babe, he asked Bob if he would agree to have him as his dad.  Adoption papers were drawn up, and Victor Siegel, whom Bob quickly grew to love, became his legal father. 

The South Side of Chicago was a fine place for a boy to grow up.  Bob loved playing baseball in the schoolyard and swimming in Lake Michigan with his buddies; dashing to a friend’s apartment to watch “Kukla, Fran and Ollie” on TV; and proudly serving as a crossing guard (with a sash to mark his status) at his elementary school.

A visit to a fraternity house at Purdue University during his senior year of high school led to one of the most terrifying events of Bob’s life.  In the early morning hours, the fraternity house caught fire, and Bob had to jump out of a second-story window to escape.  For the rest of his life, Bob had no prints on several of his fingers due to the extensive burns.  

After military service, Bob attended Roosevelt University where he received a B.S. in Business.  After graduating, he agreed to go on a blind date with a young student at the University of Michigan named Myrna “Mickey” Alpert.  The pair had drinks at the Playboy Club (different era, different standards) and to the movies where Myrna promptly fell asleep.  The second date was more successful, and four months later, Bob proposed to her in the Michigan arboretum.  When Myrna said yes, Bob was so excited he backed his parents’ car straight into a tree.

In 1966, Bob and Myrna welcomed their first child, a daughter whom they named Mona.  Parenthood sparked a desire for four walls and a yard, and the pair bought a house in Highland Park, IL.  Two and a half years later, with the birth of their son, Aaron, their family was complete. 

A young father in the 1970s, Bob sported a mustache, drove a station wagon with flower decals to hide the rust spots, and smoked the occasional pipe.  Every weekday, he drove to downtown Chicago, where he sold corrugated cardboard and then oversaw the sale of mimeograph machines. On summer weekends he would set up a kiddie pool in the backyard and stretch out on a lawn chair while Mona and Aaron sprinkled water on his feet.

In the bicentennial year of 1976, with Myrna’s enthusiastic approval, Bob accepted an out-of-town job and moved his family to Colorado where they established a home in suburban Aurora.  Bob would often say that it was the best move of his life.  With the Rocky Mountains in their backyard, Bob, Myrna, and the children spent their summers hiking and their winters cross-country skiing through the awe-inspiring landscape.  The family’s beloved first dog, Whiskey, and his successor, Lady, were welcome companions on these adventures, even if Whiskey once got a ticket for hiking off leash, and Lady’s favorite place to run in the snow was directly between Bob’s skis.

Bob worked a series of sales and management jobs in Colorado, including marketing Orange Crush merchandise for the division-champion Denver Broncos.  For the last decade and a half of his career, Bob worked as a mortgage broker, a job which brought him particular satisfaction. 

As many hours as he put in at the office, Bob always made time on the weekends for his passion: carpentry and woodwork.  He constructed a screened deck for his Aurora home and built a koi pond too, transforming the backyard into a shady oasis. Later, in retirement, Bob volunteered countless hours helping to construct homes for struggling families through Habitat for Humanity.

Growing up an only child, Bob relished time with family.  He looked forward to trips back to Chicago to visit his brothers- and sisters-in-law Susan and David Greenberg and Ed and Ilene Alpert.  He beamed with happiness when Mona married Steven Ingram in 1999 and burst more than one button with arrival their children and his first grandchildren, Braeden and Amelie, several years later.  Aaron’s wedding to Emily Begel in 2009 and their adoption of Wyatt and Corey soon after made him an even prouder patriarch. 

Through it all, Myrna was Bob’s rock, his anchor, his North Star.  Bob’s love for his wife was prodigious, despite her endless campaigns to get him to eat less red meat and consume more vegetables.  Together, Bob and Myrna traveled the world from Lisbon to London and from Mexico to Tahiti.  They celebrated their 50^th wedding anniversary on horseback with their children and grandchildren at a dude ranch in the Rockies.  In Highland Park, in Aurora, and, in their retirement years, in Central Park, Bob and Myrna welcomed countless friends into their home. They came to view many as surrogate family as well. 

Illness took its toll in his final years, but through it all Bob never lost his sense of humor.  He will be missed by family and friends, near and far. 

A memorial service will be held Tuesday, April 30^th at 11:00am at Temple Emanuel.

In lieu of flowers, please consider making a donation to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, where Bob served as a proud docent, Temple Emanuel Denver, a source of community, solace, and support, or the Denver Hospice.