Bob was practically the first person I met in Milwaukee in 1979, when he shot my employee ID photo as summer intern at The Milwaukee Journal. I still have the picture he shot. (I looked much better then, but that’s probably due as much to the intervening 20 years of pepperoni therapy as to Bob’s skills as a portrait photographer, good as they were.) From that moment, Bob became as consistent a friend, ally and advocate for me as he had been to every young photographer who entered the Jou1nal’s staff. He made everyone feel special.

Bob was a servant, who practiced service in ways far beyond what any business-magazine buzzword could describe. As manager in the photo lab, he got his hands wet mixing chemicals, running film on deadline, producing last-minute prints, whatever it took to help you do your job. It was more than just the way he did his job. It was the way he lived.

A rare thing, that, and getting rarer. Bob taught lessons we could all learn.

Our society enjoys uncharted prosperity, yet isolation grows. Neighborhoods have become subdivisions. Conversations over a backyard fence now take place on computerized chat rooms, an anonymous cyberworld where "virtual reality" has come to mean way too much reality and not nearly enough virtue. The great founding idea of our nation F Pluribus Unum, ‘out of many, one" is reversed as each of us is parsed into ever more fragmented demographic groups.

It happens on a personal scale as well. As we age, idealism meets realism and might not care for the results. Every year, you pick up more responsibilities, more demands, more things to do in less time. You have children, you have a mortgage, you have stuff, and somehow you have to pay for it all. So you work hard and try to honor God and raise your children right. But all that takes work and commitment and suddenly you don’t have enough time to even look up, let alone to remember quite why you wanted to.

If I’m not very careful, my world ends up just being about me. That world is far too small.

Bob’s trademark talk-until-lunchtime breakfasts, they noticed a local shoe store’s special sale on athletic shoes. These were mostly Day-Glo colors and last year’s models, but still good shoes, nonetheless.

"I’ll take them all," Bob told the clerk. The next day, all the kids at the local Boys Club were playing basketball in new shoes, their faces shining as brightly as the colors on their feet.

That story could be repeated in a hundred variations. From new reporters needing help with the rent until their first paycheck, to photographers needing lighting advice, to a generation of campus ministry staff needing financial support at the local university, Bob made available whatever he had to help whomever he could.

With Journal staffer Rick Wood, Bob formed CIP’s "Milwaukee Mafia." For years, Rick and Bob would attach mailing labels to CIP issues by hand. Not glamorous work, but try to circulate a newsletter without it. For other profes-sional groups, Bob was just as eager to work, usually in the background, making the endless phone calls to line up the next conference or key meeting. When the event came, Bob would arrive early to set up and stay late to clean up.

It almost seemed out of place. Perhaps "out of time" is a better description.

After all, we live in an age of self-refer-ential politicians whose idea of effective leadership is whatever the polls and focus groups say it is. Truth doesn’t matter. Wise decisions don’t matter. Feeling good about yourself matters. This world would be better immeasurably so if people like these were obscure and people like Bob were celebrated.

Of course, even if that were possible, Bob would have nothing to do with it. The last thing he ever wanted was atten-tion. When he talked to you, he made you think that you were the only person in the world at that moment. He asked about your life, family and work in a way that made it clear that he was anxious for the answers. He didn’t volunteer details of his own, not because of privacy but because of relevance. Bob wasn’t about Bob.

More than anything else, Bob was about Jesus Christ. Not in an abrasive, in-your-face way, but in a deeper fashion that shows a life marinated in the truth of the gospel. The flavor of that gospel showed though every facet of his life, and it was that gospel, not Bob himself, that he wanted others to taste. As John the Baptist said of Jesus, "He must become greater, I must become less" (John 3:30) Bob really wanted to "become less" so that Jesus would show through.

In the past few months, though, Bob’s discomfort with attention may have worked against him. He never really admitted to his friends that he had can-cer. He never really let them know about the struggles that he faced, not until he checked himself into the hospital with very few days remaining.

A few weeks ago, the relentless progress of bone cancer pulled a curtain between Bob and those of us who knew him. The pain he kept to himself has now ceased. The servant has finally gotten his well- earned rest. Bob Goessner has gone home.

The world is now a little bit smaller.