Karen mentioned Debbie Nolan in her notes a couple days ago. She and Bob Nolan were good friends while we lived in North Dakota. I worked with Bob at the site and we were both members of the church, so we became fairly close while we lived there. There is a guy here at American Express (where I work now) who has a voice that sounds exactly like Bob Nolan and everytime I hear him speak, I think of Bob. So, he has been on my mind a lot lately.
One incident which is pretty funny happened to Bob one summer. Bob drove a little old fashioned style Volkswagen Beetle. He would prop a magazine or a book on the steering wheel and read as he drove around the back roads near Cavalier. The roads hardly ever had any traffic on them so not paying attention to the road was not too dangerous.
One day Bob was driving along at about 10 or 15 miles per hour on one of the back roads near Cavalier. He was reading a book and not watching where he was going and the car went off the road and rolled. Remember the shoulders they have in North Dakota? Well, he rolled right off the road and the car just gently turned over on it’s roof. He wasn’t hurt. I think he was able to crawl out and turn the car over by hand and go on his way. We teased him about that for months.
One Christmas, we were meeting in one of our apartments to have a Christmas Party. We were singing carols and someone was playing the piano. I remember we all sang “Silent Night”. Bob was sitting right next to me singing. For some reason I can’t explain, I had the feeling that there were other people in the room. Spirits, angels, whatever you want to call them. They were singing along with us. I might have thought it was just my imagination, except when the song was done, Bob looked over at me and said, “Wow, what was that?. That was the most beautiful I’ve ever that song.” I believe someone we couldn’t see was singing with us. A very spiritual moment.
Dad