EULOGY FOR BOB - LONG VERSION

By Tim Rohr

Bob's funeral will be Tuesday, April 15, 2025 at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Yigo. Last respects will be from 9am to 12pm. The Funeral Mass will commence at 12:pm with burial at the Veterans Cemetery in Piti.

It is serendipitous that Bob, one of the few who fought to the end to hold our government accountable, will be committed to the Earth and to Heaven on "Tax Day." 

I was asked by his family to give one of the eulogies. I'm guessing there will be three. Upon being asked, I was in a bit of a quandary. Eulogies are not permitted at a Catholic Funeral Mass. If there is to be a eulogy, it is to occur at the vigil (wake) or after the burial:

...the practice of eulogies at Catholic funerals is officially discouraged. In the General Introduction to the Order of Christian Funerals, we are told that a homily is to be given, "but there is never to be a eulogy" (no.27)...The church prescribes that before the end of the vigil, "a member or a friend of the family may speak in remembrance of the deceased" (no.80). - Are eulogies allowed at funeral masses?

In Guam, however, the practice of having a vigil or a wake the night before the funeral, which is common elsewhere, is replaced with what is called "Last respects," which is essentially a wake (usually about 3 hours) before the Funeral Mass commences and at the church wherein the Funeral Mass is to be celebrated. 

The eulogies for Bob will be shared at the end of the "wake," so technically there is no violation of church norms, but nevertheless, I did not want to detract from the solemnity of what the Funeral Mass is really all about (the salvation of Bob's soul) with the usual funny stories and melancholy memories that make up many eulogies. 

I'll save what I am going to say until I say it, and then I'll share it here. Meanwhile, this post will be my Eulogy for Bob.

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I first met Bob around 2009. I had written a letter to the editor that caught the attention of a friend of Bob's. I suppose my letter was incendiary enough to make Bob's friend think that I should meet Bob. So he arranged a meeting and we hit it off. 

I'm not sure what Bob saw in me other than a person who was willing to go public on things others weren't. But it was the beginning of several adventures. 

The Journal

If I remember right, our first adventure was a fight for the Legislative Journal. The Journal is a written record of a legislative session, in other words the "minutes." In November of 2010, the legislature had pulled some late night shenanigans to deep-six a bill requiring informed consent for abortion. I was present at the session and despite being new to the legislative process, I could tell that something wasn't right. I brought this to Bob and he instructed me to request a copy of the Journal for that session in order to document the "malfeasance" - which is a word I learned from Bob. 

Senator Judith Won Pat was the Speaker at the time and I directed all my requests for the Journal to her. Won Pat ignored my requests. I began writing about my battle to get the journal in letters to the editor and eventually I got the Journal. The Journal in fact documented the malfeasance and I used it as basis to continue to hammer the legislature for the next three years until informed consent for abortion finally made it into law. 

How the common man can win

This experience served me well going forward. I realized that the common man could win against the biggest powers that be (in this case the legislature) not by making a superior moral argument - which I could do, but by hammering away at little things like the violation of standing rules, non-compliance with the Sunshine Act, and other "bothersome" stuff that legislators and others in power hope we aren't paying attention to. 

Bob taught me how to do that - how to make and hold the powerful accountable by simply knowing what the laws and rules require. 

One instance comes to mind. In 2011, then-chairman of the Rules Committee, Rory Respicio, in an attempt to deep-six a second version of the informed consent for abortion legislation, had cut the camera at a critical juncture in a Rules Committee meeting. Bob told me how to get the DVD of the recording of the meeting and how to demonstrate what Rory did. I didn't have a blog back then but I did have a newsletter with about 1000 addresses. I isolated the portion from the recording, uploaded it, linked it to an expose in my newsletter, and sent it to 1000 people, including Rory and everyone else in the legislature. It still took another couple years, but eventually the legislation made it into law. 

Abortion

At the time, Bob was more interested in holding lawmakers accountable than he was in abortion. In fact, he told me he had no opinion about it. At one point he asked me why I thought it was wrong. I had long since learned in my work in Catholic apologetics to never answer a question with an answer, but to answer with a question. So I answered: 

"When is it every okay to intentionally take the life of an innocent, defenseless, helpless human being?"

Bob was intellectually honest enough to say "Never." And from that moment, not only was Bob a virulent defender of life in the womb, but he made that "question" (answer) his own and often used it during his radio run with Tall Tales with Bob Klitzkie. 

Becoming Catholic

Also, around that time, Bob began attending a Catholic adult study group I had started several years earlier. I suppose he found it intellectually stimulating - which is what anything had to be to interest Bob. One day, over breakfast, he was asking me questions about Catholicism and I was answering them. Finally, though, I asked him a question: "Bob why aren't you Catholic?" Bob answered: "No one ever asked me." I replied "I just did." He responded: "Okay, where do I sign?" A couple years later, Bob was received into the Catholic Church and he asked me to be his sponsor. 

Actually, as Bob would later tell me, he had been studying Catholicism since the events of 9/11 in 2001. He had become convinced that 9/11 was part of a religious war, a spiritual battle, and that the Catholic Church was the only entity that could win it. I recommended that he read the book "Triumph," a history of the Catholic Church by Harry Crocker III, in which the many battles between the Catholic Church and the Saracens were recounted. It became one of Bob's favorite books and a foundation for his intellectual surety in choosing to become Catholic. 

Same-sex civil unions

Also, around 2009 or so, the issue of same-sex civil unions raised its legislative head. I was approached by a member of the clergy and was asked to "do something." I believe I was approached because I had been at the forefront of the anti-abortion wars for awhile. It turned into an ugly battle and caused myself and my family a lot of pain. The sad thing is that it didn't need to happen that way. 

In hindsight, it probably would have just gone away as there was never enough support for it, either in the legislature or in the community. But the media smelled a story, and they pumped it for everything it was worth, casting me as the villain, the "town homophobe." 

I suppose one could say I took the bait, but I probably still would have let it go had it not been for some fast-ones being pulled by the legislature again. In this case, it was a substitute bill that was not really a substitute bill, but a new bill introduced as a substitute in order to avoid a public hearing. That got Bob's attention and he coached me on what to do about it. I did what Bob said to do and eventually the bill fell apart, but not after a whole lot of damage. In the end, SCOTUS legalized same-sex marriage a few years later and it was no longer an issue. 

"Unborn Child"

Perhaps one of Bob's biggest contributions to Guam and to its future was enshrining the term "unborn child" into law. It was in the context of a bill that had failed a couple of times already. The legislation made harming or killing a child in utero, an unborn child, a felony. I believe it was called the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. I'll look it up and link it later. After the bill's second failure, pretty much on technical grounds, I asked Bob to rewrite the bill to get rid of the technical trip-ups. He did. The term "unborn child" was featured prominently, Bob testified for the bill, and the bill became law. 

Abortion reporting law ends abortion in Guam

Another major contribution to Guam and unborn children and their mothers came in 2015, when he wrote and shepherded through a bill that filled in the blanks of an existing abortion reporting law, with one of those blanks being legal consequences for failure to report. Once that bill became law, that was pretty much the final straw (following seven other pro-life laws I, Bob, and others had backed) for the abortion providers. By 2018, and after performing thousands of abortions for decades, the last abortionist closed up shop and to this day no doctor in Guam will perform abortions. 

The Certificate of Title Fiasco and the collapse of Apuron

Bob's biggest contribution, though, was instigating the action that brought what we called "the Yona property" back to the archdiocese. The Yona property was the Redemptoris Mater Seminary, the former Accion Hotel, and at the time it was secretly alienated by then-Archbishop Apuron to his Neocat buddies, the property was valued at 75 Million Dollars. 

Bob had been watching the war in the archdiocese: the Fr. Paul thing, the Msgr. Benavente thing, the clergy sex abuse thing, and all the other malfeasance - as Bob called it. But he didn't see a way he could get involved other than to advise me on this or that. In fact, even after we discovered the secret deed which functionally gave the property to the Neocats, Bob still didn't see a way to do anything, though he was more concerned. 

But then, (it was November 2015), the now missing "David the Tall" (David C. Quitugua) then-Vicar General, posted a copy of the title for the property on the front page of the Umatuna. I showed it to Bob and he noticed something. I can't remember what it was just now, but soon thereafter both he and I showed up at the Department of Land Management and had a meeting with the Deputy Director. 

In short, the title had been fabricated. Now that was something Bob could sink his teeth into and he did. All hell broke loose. Bob ended up suing the Director of Land Management and won, but more importantly, Bob's work to expose the scam exposed a much bigger scam that set the stage for the collapse of Apuron, the closure of the seminary, the return of the property, and the environment that led to Apuron's sex victims feeling safe enough to begin coming forward. And as we know, that drip, drip, drip turned into a torrent. 

All of this is documented in three JW series: CERTIFICATE OF TITLE FIASCO, ORCHESTRATED, and HIGH DRAMA IN THE AOA. 

Bob and I went on to stay involved in several other adventures, perhaps the most recent of which was our testimony before the Supreme Court of Guam in July 2023. The issue was whether or not Belle's Law was still a law post-Dobbs. Bob and I were the only two amici (friends of the court) who presented testimony in addition to the lawyers. Ultimately my argument failed. However, I'm proud to say that (again with Bob's coaching) it earned me several mentions (mostly hostile ones) in the Supreme Court's decision. The jury is actually still out on Belle's Law. I believe it is in the 9th Circuit now. 

My son

And one last thing, though it's too personal to provide details. In short, he helped me stay alive during my darkest days and ultimately provided me the legal education to get my son back.

Farewell Bob. I'm going to have to go it alone. At least for now. 

Your friend and student, 

Tim