On January 7, 2025, one of my longest and best friends will celebrate a milestone birthday. Words of appreciation have gone unspoken for too long. Today’s post attempts to rectify that.
I met Robert I. Perkins Jr. in 1987.
At the end of my junior year of high school, I interviewed for the high school intern and columnist position at the Lake Wales, Fla., Daily Highlander, officially launching my career in journalism and communications.
A few months into this experience, Bob was hired as sports editor right out of Baylor University. While we had some superficial characteristics in common – native Texans, Baptists, sports enthusiasts, Dallas Cowboys fans, relative youth compared to the demographics of the greater Lake Wales metropolitan area – there were many ways in which we were quite different.
Bob was brash. I was more timid. Bob pushed back against authority. I was compliant. Bob was always in motion, full of energy, cracking wise and thrill seeking. I was studious, methodical, attentive and the epitome of stability. Bob worked quickly and thrived on writing on deadline. I was a complete novice who personified the axiom, “Haste makes waste.”
Upon his arrival in our tiny newsroom of colorful characters, Bob began adding to my journalistic education by assigning me to cover Lake Wales Little League. I approached this beat with the seriousness of a professional sports team beat writer, keeping the scorebook and writing up games of the week. Bob was my editor and guide, refusing to spare my feelings when I submitted sub-optimal copy.
“This isn’t writing. This is typing!” Bob once told me. I had turned in a story with the word “aloud” incorrectly substituted for “allowed” throughout (as in “The pitcher ‘aloud’ five runs on six hits with three errors.” I know. Embarrassing.)
In addition to writing instruction, Bob did resort to occasional hazing. One day I went back into the darkroom to leave some film to be developed from a game I had shot. The Daily Highlander’s famous photographer was a well-seasoned Ernest Hermingway-look-alike named Harlan Brown.
The narrow hallway back to the darkroom was walled with wood paneling. Harlan, who had as large a physical presence as he had personality, would have to turn sideways to squeeze down the corridor to get into the darkroom, the buttons on his shirt catching in the paneling’s grooves. Harlan also had a habit of constantly emitting a low grumble, giving voice to all manner of complaints in a deeply resonant radio voice that intimidated pimply-faced cub reporters like me.
As I fumbled about in the red-lit darkroom looking for just the right place to leave my film, terror seized me when I heard grumbling and button scraping coming toward me. I thought I heard something like, “Why these stupid kids think they can roam around in my darkroom and mess with my stuff…” or something akin to it. I froze.
The shadow in red light that emerged was not Harlan Brown-shaped. Bob had leaned against the paneling to scrape his buttons while doing his best Harlan vocal impersonation. He thought my reaction was hilarious when he discovered how effective his ruse had been.
The now defunct Daily Highlander was an afternoon paper. Noon was our deadline for that day’s edition. The ideal production cycle was to write all of your copy in the afternoon for the next day’s paper, come in the next morning to lay out and paste up your pages so they could go on press by noon and be out the door for delivery early in the afternoon.
Bob was not bound by such conventions. He thrived on pushing deadline and seemed to do his best work with the managing editor and press foreman standing over him. He preferred to come in each morning, crank out his stories, lay out and paste up his pages, take an extended lunch hour with me hitting golf balls or playing pickup basketball near his apartment down by the lake.
At that time in his life Bob also showed an aversion to cleanliness and organization. I had the misfortune of sitting at his desk one week while he was on vacation. Rather than clean it for him and possibly throw away a receipt he needed for an expense report, I simply told him upon his return that the business manager had left him a mileage check. He spent the afternoon cleaning his desk searching for the lost treasure. I ended the charade late in the day.
“Oh, there was no check,” I said, heading for the door for the day. “I just thought you needed to clean your desk.”
Bob brought a playful, mischievous spirit to the newsroom. He once told our Features Editor, Peg Finch, who constantly told story and anecdotes about the celebrities, real and imagined, she had met over the years, to “shut up.”
To amuse himself, he would also toss me one of those little plastic footballs they throw into the stands at high school football games. One day with our coworker Vaughn Cofer sitting at a desk between us, Bob began tossing the football to me over Vaughn’s head.
Vaughn was the kindest and gentlest woman in the newsroom, but the high jinks were getting the best of her. Rather than put her foot down and ask to stop the shenanigans, she got up from her desk and left the newsroom in a fit of agitation. She walked out the front door of The Highlander building and was promptly hit by one of the carrier’s who was backing their car out of the narrow parking lot. She ended up at the emergency room with a broken arm. To this day I can’t help but feel we were at least partially responsible.
Bob was an avid fan and player of basketball. In addition to one-on-one games on the outdoor courts at Lake Wailes (yes, it’s spelled differently than the town), he played in a regular pickup game at Warner Southern College where met the acquaintance of Ben Peterson, who attended our church and was a mutual friend. It was in one of those games that Bob broke his ankle.
At the time, Bob drove a stick-shift Ford Mustang. A single guy all alone in this world, Bob taught me to drive stick so I could drive him to assignments. We had fun covering events together until the money-conscious publisher put a stop to paying two people to cover the same event. Bob eventually recovered enough to work the clutch, and my days as a chauffeur to the infirm ended.
At some point Bob decided to pull himself together and succumbed to my persistent invitations to attend our church. He became a faithful member and regular at our weekly pickup basketball games. The entire project was almost undone one Monday night when my youth pastor at the time punched Bob in the mouth during a particularly intense game.
To his credit, Bob did not let that hinder his spiritual renewal or our friendship.
I will never forget the special dispensation Bob received from my dad, our church’s pastor, one Super Bowl Sunday. While delivering his typical admonition to the congregation to not skip Sunday night church to stay home and watch the Super Bowl, my dad paused mid-sentence when his eye caught sight of Bob sitting next to me on the second row.
“The NFL has never done a thing for you, but Christ died for you! Don’t stay home and watch the Super Bowl tonight! You should be in the Lord’s house! There is no excuse… uh, well, except for Bob Perkins. It’s his job to watch the Super Bowl.”
The other significant moment of grace that befell Bob while attending Trinity Baptist Church was meeting a certain Miss Faith Thornton. I left for college shortly after their first introduction, leaving love to bloom in the Florida sunshine. So pure was his love for Faith that Bob even sprung for a special Valentine’s Day classified ad in The Daily Highlander that read something like, “First I had it, then I lost it. And you helped me get it again.”
Of course, Bob was talking about “Faith,” in a very witty play on words. But Faith, ever the literary critic perfectly matched for Bob, told him, “You made it sound like I gave you a venereal disease.”
While I was off at Troy University, Bob took a job as the editor of a golf magazine in Austin, Texas, returning him to the Promised Land. He and Faith married, and soon, life took us in different directions. We lost touch for a few years but reconnected about four years into my career at The Macon Telegraph in the mid-1990s. We haven’t lost touch since.
The Perkinses moved to Atlanta for a few years in the late Aughts, and though we both had kids by that time, we were able to occasionally relive the glory days. Faith, an excellent cook, laid out some amazing spreads for watching Cowboys games. She even hosted a Pinterest-worthy baby shower for us when we were expecting Carlton’s arrival. We were able to be of some support when they had Sam after Faith was involved in a frightening car accident, but I have never felt like we were able to repay their generosity.
Bob became a communications consultant for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in the 2010s, and we worked on communications plans for the Together for Hope rural poverty initiative and the Church Benefits Board. Bob also helped cover the annual CBF General Assembly and the New Baptist Covenant, convened by President Jimmy Carter in Atlanta in late January 2008.
By the time the Perkinses left Atlanta, our friendship had been through too much to let go of. We stayed in touch with regular phone calls during our commutes before texting became our primary way of communicating.
Bob has given me some of the best reading I’ve enjoyed over the past 37 years, and his prayers and thoughtful listening sustained me at some of my darkest moments.
It’s not often that dudes tell each other what they mean to them, and that’s a shame. On January 7 Bob will celebrate his 60th birthday, and I will be extra grateful that for more than half of those years, he’s been a part of my life.
Here’s to you, Bob Perkins. May we never lose touch across the miles nor the ability to laugh at our circumstances or ourselves.
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