"Life Story," posted each Saturday on Leader Publications' website, focuses on one individual's impact on his or her community. Today's story is written by Laura Marlow.
At an age when many children are learning to tie their shoes, Bob Wilkinson was learning to pick out a tune on the guitar. Mr. Wilkinson, who died April 6 at the age of 82, played music for most of his life, and his family says he was the catalyst that launched the Wilkinson Brothers musical act in Branson.
"He had guitars, a banjo, pedal guitar, mandolin - and he played them all," said Lavera Wilkinson, his wife of 63 years. "He didn't read music; he played by ear. If he heard a tune he hadn't heard before and liked it, he'd fool around with it till he could play it."
Lavera said it was her husband's mother who launched him on his long musical journey.
"His mother bought him a guitar at Sears when he was about 5 or 6 years old," she said. "She had music in her, and she showed him the chords and he started strumming and playing. She worked with him, and as the years went on, he learned more. Then he began to show other people how to play."
Growing up in the Farmington area, Mr. Wilkinson taught his younger brothers, Charlie, Larry and Gary, as well as a number of friends. His brothers eventually formed a musical act that performed locally and occasionally in St. Louis.
Mr. Wilkinson and his wife, meanwhile, ran a dairy farm.
"He got on with General Motors in 1962, and we sold the farm in the mid-'60s," Lavera said. "I was working with AT&T, and we were living in Farmington."
When her job sent her to St. Louis, the family decided to move northward, and ended up in Festus in 1977.
"It was supposed to be a temporary place," Lavera said with a laugh. "And we've been here 35 years."
Mr. Wilkinson continued to make music with his brothers and friends on an informal basis.
"When we moved here in 1977, the people he used to play with down in the Lead Belt would come up here and play down in the basement," Lavera said. "I've got a tape of the two of us playing 'Amazing Grace' together - I played the organ."
The three youngest Wilkinson brothers moved to Branson and began performing, opening their own Wilkinson Brothers Theater in 1981.
The boys' parents moved to Branson as well, and Lavera said she and her husband visited fairly frequently.
"They wanted us to go to Branson, too," Lavera said. "But Bob hesitated; we were much older than they were. He had been with GM for many years and I had a good job with AT&T. We didn't see how we would better ourselves by giving up good jobs to go down there."
Mr. Wilkinson would still play when the brothers got together, his wife said.
"He never played with them onstage, but when they'd get together at home on a visit, he'd play with them," she said. "He never regretted (the decision not to play professionally). He always thought he did the right thing."
Mr. Wilkinson would go out of his way to help others, Lavera said.
"He was a very loving person, and if he knew someone who was in need of something or was having problems, he wanted to help them," she said. "He had a very caring heart. He helped people when he had things to do on his own farm. He would go and help, then come home and do his own work.
"When we first moved here, our neighbor took sick, and Bob took care of him. There have been others that he did the same thing for. He did have a heart for helping his friends and neighbors."
Although neither of the couple's two sons showed much interest in playing, one of their grandsons took up playing the guitar. Mr. Wilkinson showed him some things, and gave the young man one of his own guitars.
Over the past several years, Mr. Wilkinson's health had been deteriorating.
"He was in and out of hospitals so much, and he had to go in a nursing home on two or three occasions," Lavera said. "He was affected with diabetes and severe polyneuropathy. Finally, they let him come home, and he got to spend some time with his little dog that we'd had for 13 years."
She said Mr. Wilkinson went on hospice care and died at home.
The couple - known for years to family and friends as 'Bob and Honey' - had what Lavera calls "a wonderful life together."
"He was just a special person," she said. "After 63 years, it's hard, terribly hard, for him to be gone. All the kids keep saying, 'It's just not right for us all to not be together.'
"But God has taken him out of his misery and pain. It wasn't always a smooth road, but we were always able to work together to make things come out right."
