Joe Robertson

Joe Robertson lived a big life. He was born to poor working-class parents into a home with a dirt floor in Bingham Canyon in 1941. He needed a big escape so he got himself into Utah State on a baseball scholarship then accepted to a Masters Program in Art History at Notre Dame University where could indulge himself with Fighting Irish Football and where his appetite for books and scholarship and stories of the American West took off. He taught AP American History and coached Baseball, Basketball and Football at Sky View High School. He fished the big rivers of Montana and Idaho and Utah. Crossed the country four times, in planes to take students to Washington DC, in a minivan with teenage boys to Fenway Park and Wrigley Field. To Canada and down the Oregon coast in a giant motor home pulling a trailer with all his kids, his mother and a toy poodle. Road-tripped from Stockholm Sweden to Holland's WWII battle sites, then to Brussels and London. Hit every Utah National Park, backpacked the Wind River mountains, spent every 2nd week of September in the Tetons and wintered with his wife in Hurricane Utah. He suffered no fools, but had big friendships with Danny, Jim, Gordon, Kenny, and Kirk.

He spent his life with Marily Jones, a woman he loved so much he married her three times. Together, they raised four big personalities, a daughter and three sons, Carrie, Eric, Greg and Ryan. They have 10 big grandkids (6 of them over 6' 3" tall), five greats, (4 more on the way). They had two black labs, one golden lab, a cockapoo, a cocker spaniel, a small dog of unknown origin, and three cats. All loved. All fawned over. He made a few big mistakes, but owned every one of them with big apologies. He loved his family with an enormous heart, giving us wide-open spaces to explore our own lives on our own terms. No big speeches or narrow bits of advice, no judgements. The 'I love yous' were numerous and often. The jokes were loud and goodbyes were always accompanied by lingering bear hugs. He went big with the ice cream, the Dutch oven cooking, the doughnuts, with his garden and flower beds, his ATV, a lake house rental in Houston. He provided abundance and created a stable, comforting home for his children free from the troubles that plagued his youth. Joe was the proud culmination of a line of Scottish Robertson ancestors that reach back through Colorado, Missouri, Tennessee, and colonial Virginia.

He wrote three large volumes of family history imagining the adventures of these young men who left their homes to search for bigger things, as they fought in the Civil War, founded frontier cities, lived through the dust bowl and the Great Depression, and finally came to work in the world's biggest copper mine. But the Robertson story didn't get swallowed up by that giant hole in the ground. Dad made sure of that. He's still here. We all feel him. He lives in all of us as we carry on with this grand, American adventure he so carefully laid out for us to experience. Good game Bubba. Good game.

Family and Friends are invited to join us at the Smithfield Cemetery for a graveside service at 2:30 pm on Friday, August 8.