News Room

Robert "Bob" Brower, 1946 - 2004

We will miss Bob's courage, enthusiasm, and intense compassion for living things.

October 18, 2004 In tragic news for the Brower Family and the Earth Island community, David Brower's middle son Robert "Bob" Brower died suddenly last week from complications related to previously undiagnosed liver cancer.
He was 58, and is survived by his wife Shirley, his brother Ken, his sister Barbara, his nieces Anne-Kathryn and Rosemary Olsen, and his aunt and uncle Joe and Gayle.

During the 1960s, Robert starred as the "every-child" in his father's nature advocacy films for the Sierra Club, assisted with the precision mechanicals on the Sierra Club exhibit format books, and explored the magical passages of Glen Canyon before it was flooded to create "Lake" Powell. Robert returned to work closely with his father in David's final years as his caretaker, guardian, and co-editor of the exhibit-format website The Wildness Within Us.

After his David's passing in November 2000, Bob threw himself even more into his father's work, expanding Wildness WIthin on the web, joining the Board of Restore Hetch Hetchy, and lobbying for an environmentally appropriate High Speed Rail system in California.

In his website, Bob's aptitude for electronics came together with his eye for natural beauty to express the exuberant love of the Earth that marked him as a Brower. Bob had become very active in recent years in the Berkeley environmental and social justice community alongside his wife Shirley Richardson-Brower, and lobbied for the David Brower Center to be sited downtown.

We will miss Bob's courage, enthusiasm, and intense compassion for living things. His father often told a story about swatting a fly in front of young Bob, only to be chastised, "But Dad, that was his only chance." A gentle and sometimes troubled soul who worked to better himself and the planet, Robert Brower will be honored at a memorial at the Berkeley City Club on November 13.

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There is additional information in an article in the Oakland Tribune.