Robert’s Red Light

Remembering a friend who died suddenly and tragically.

One night, I returned to my apartment building on Oak Grove Street and noticed that one of the lamps by the doorway glowed white as usual while the other burned with a bright, lurid red. My building was one of three identical Prohibition-era apartment buildings, each with two orbs that came on at night to light our way home as we made our way up the stately cement staircases. Now, five of them were white and one, randomly, wasn’t. 

Later, I ran into Robert, who was the caretaker of the building, and I asked him why that one lamp had suddenly turned scarlet. 

“I did that,” he told me. “I thought it would be something different. Do you not like it?”

“It’s fine,” I said, “I just wanted to know why my side of the building was suddenly the red light district.”

Robert giggled. I can’t remember now whether I’d run into him at the 19 Bar, or we had this conversation on the second-floor balcony of 227 Oak Grove, but I do remember that he was a little tipsy. I think I was too. 

On Friday, Dec. 8, 2023, Robert died after an assailant with a golf club senselessly attacked him. I won’t include the gruesome details here because it feels disrespectful to do so, but I’ll just note that the Minneapolis Police Chief called it “grotesque” and leave it at that. 

Like everyone else who knew him, I’m stunned and struggling to accept that this is real. 

I first met Robert in the winter of 2015, when I packed up my apartment in the Philips neighborhood and moved to Loring Park. Tired of a long commute, endless problems with mice, and a weird dude in the building (he asked my downstairs neighbor if he could take a bath with her), I found a new place in Loring Park and I bailed. 

It was a bitterly cold day in February when my friends helped me move to Oak Grove Street, where I gained brand-new tongue-and-groove hardwood floors, freshly laid bathroom tiles, new appliances, and a balcony that overlooked the street. I also met Robert, the caretaker of my new building, who quickly felt like an old friend. 

Robert had lived in the building for 25 years by the time I moved in. His apartment was just down the hall from mine. One afternoon, while we chatted on the balcony, as we would do several times during the five years that I lived there, we talked about the neighborhood. He lent me a book about the history of Loring Park, which is how I learned the frustrating history of the Naulhaka Flats, which were razed in the 80s. I asked him if he had any idea what the interior of our building had looked like originally when it was built in 1919, and he told me that nobody remembered, but he shared my desire to know the answer. 

Robert’s dog, Sammi, sometimes joined us on the balcony. Robert noticed that she had curled up on the floor next to the chair I was sitting in. 

“She must trust you,” he said to me. “She keeps laying by you.” 

Across the street from our building was the Oak Grove Grocery. From the balcony, you could see the twinkle lights and the neon ‘Open’ sign in the window, and hear the bell above the door jingle whenever someone went in or out. Sometimes, the clerks would stand outside the door, taking smoke breaks and chatting with people from the block. 

Robert worked in the Oak Grove Grocery. Once, while ringing up my purchases, we talked about the upcoming mayoral election. Robert told me he was interested in the “Hennepin Theatre trust guy.” I went back to my apartment and did a quick search. That’s how I found out about Tom Hoch’s campaign, for which I eventually served as Social Media Director. 

Before he came to work at the store, Robert spent many years as a ballet dancer. After dancing with the Kansas City Ballet, he came to Minneapolis, where he performed with Ballet of the Dolls. I deeply regret now that I never got to see him perform live. 

He was long retired from dancing when I met him, but he was busy taking care of community gardens nearby; I often crossed paths with him while he was on his way to a garden, shovel in hand. He also established and ran the Stevens Square farmer’s market. Vegetables that didn’t sell at the market often appeared in the cooler at the Oak Grove Grocery. Robert was effortlessly stylish, cutting a dapper figure even when he was just in a t-shirt and jeans and covered in earth. 

Robert’s life ending on the 43rd anniversary of John Lennon’s assassination is a coincidence, but the parallels are too striking to ignore. Like Lennon, Robert was the victim of a deranged madman. And while it may be happening on a much smaller scale, grief pours from people who knew him at the same rate and intensity. 

There is one key difference, however; while the St. John of Peace image that arose after Lennon’s death was largely a creation of the media, Robert’s contributions to the community are not in doubt. He’ll be remembered as a great guy because he did great things. 

In 2021, my father passed away from lymphoma, so I left Oak Grove Street to move in with my mom who needed help paying the mortgage on the house. Plus, apartments shrink significantly when you’re not allowed to leave them, so after months of pandemic restrictions, I was ready for a change. 

I hadn’t seen Robert since I left Loring Park, but when I saw on Facebook that he’d died, I immediately texted a friend, who called me and filled me in on the details. The shock of it. How could this happen? How could this happen in broad daylight? I won’t ask why because there is no why. There will never be a why no matter what defense the suspect offers up. 

I imagine sitting on the balcony at 227 Oak Grove, looking down at the grocery store. I imagine the twinkle lights going out, leaving a dark hole where a community used to be. That’s what losing Robert is like. That’s what everyone keeps saying, that he was a bright light. It’s like a candle snuffed out, a lamp yanked from its socket….but really, it’s more like those old-fashioned string lights, the kind that are wired in series: when one bulb burns out or breaks, the whole string goes dark. 

On the night Prince died, I ran into Robert at the 19 Bar. He told me he was bummed about the singer’s passing. That night, the city was all lit up in purple. I’m thinking that to honor Robert, I might change the bulb in my porchlight to a red one. It might confuse the neighbors, but it would be something different, just like Robert wanted.