Robert Dubose, Sr.

Robert Elwood DuBose was born September 9, 1930 at 7:30 a.m., in the little central Florida town of Frostproof.  Two weeks after his birth, little Bobby was on the move with his parents, Watt and Irene DuBose, as they followed the crops to Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas mainly packing tomatoes.  A couple of years later, Bobby’s sister Anita was born in Harlingen, Texas.  As Bobby and Anita got older, they attended school in Florida if they were back home or went to school wherever they were working at the time.  During his lifetime he remembers changing schools nineteen times, sometimes three times in the same school year.  The family lived on the road, in rooming houses, apartments, once in a converted chicken coop and finally in trailers.

Bob finished 8th grade in Palmetto, Florida in 1944.  Soon after this, the family moved to Tampa, Florida.  Here Bob completed his Freshman and Sophomore years at Tampa Junior Academy, a ten-grade church school.  He then attended Forest Lake Academy, for his Junior and Senior years of high school.

During his Sophomore year at Tampa Junior Academy, a new student, a 14-year-old red-haired girl named Joyce Pope, walked into Bob’s class, and sat down beside a 15-year-old boy named Bob DuBose.  Now Bob had been friends with a few girls, but never one like this girl.  She breathed the very atmosphere of gentleness and purity.  Her very nature commanded respect.  Bob was smitten!  After that day, nothing was ever the same again.

Following his graduation from Forest Lake Academy in 1948, Bob studied printing at a local vocational school and got a job as an apprentice typesetter at the Orlando Sentinel-Star.  Since he had gained some knowledge of the Linotype machine, the newspaper manager hired him at a higher rate than the other apprentices.  He had just turned 18.

Bob and Joyce had been going together more than three years and very much in love.  Now that he had a good paying job, he could begin to think about what it would take to change Joyce’s last name from Pope to DuBose.  He didn’t want to take a chance on getting a negative response when he proposed marriage to her, so he decided to word his proposal in positive language.  He asked, "We’re going to get married, aren’t we?"  She said, "Yes!"  So, on April 23, 1949, Bob and Joyce had a beautiful wedding at the Tampa, Florida Seventh-day Adventist Church with Pastor Mitchell R. Garrett officiating.

Soon after Bob and Joyce were married, the U.S. Army, needing soldiers in Korea, classified Bob as 1-A.  However, on their first anniversary, April 23, 1950, they came home from Florida Hospital in Orlando, with a gift who changed that classification.  God blessed their home with an 8 lb. 4 oz boy, who they named Robert Elwood DuBose, Jr.  Because of the change in classification, Bob was never drafted.

During the first ten years of marriage, God blessed their family with three more boys. Richard Charles was born in Tampa, October 17, 1953, where Bob was now working for the St. Petersburg Times.  Stephen Edward joined the family the 27th of July 1955.  Daniel Thomas came along February 16,1960 in Palmetto, Florida where Bob now worked for a small mom-and-pop commercial print shop.

While working in the printing trade, Bob was active in church as a deacon and an elder, but for several years he had been wrestling with the feeling that he should devote his life to full time ministry.  He figured it wasn’t possible to go to college with a family to care for. Finally, he made the break and applied to Southern Missionary College - now Southern Adventist University.  With four boys now ages, ten, eight, five and six months, Bob knew he would need a job.  He  and the family drove up to Collegedale, Tennessee, and Bob went to the College Press and met with the manager and shop superintendent.  They were in need of a Linotype and Intertype operator and wanted to hire Bob when school began.  He told them he would come to work there on one condition.  He had served his apprenticeship; he was an experienced journeyman operator and could not work for the usual student wages that other students in the press were earning.  The manager replied that if the full-time supervisors in the shop learned that one of the students was earning the same pay as they were, there could be some dissatisfaction.  Bob feels God put the thought in his mind to ask for five cents below them, making it less than full-time pay.  He got the job!  Thus, commenced four years of college with graduation May 31, 1964.  Then came Seminary at Andrews University in Michigan.  Bob again got a job working for the press, this time the University Press.

When Seminary days were over, it was back to Florida where Bob had been hired as an associate pastor at the Tampa First Church.  After pastoring in several churches in Florida, he and Joyce became Florida Conference Evangelists, holding meetings all over the state, and baptizing thousands.  Bob and Joyce worked as a team - including singing together.

Following retirement in 1997, they moved to the mountains of North Carolina and joined the Waynesville Seventh-day Adventist Church.  Bob used some of his retirement time to continue his love of music.  He had started writing music back in the years he worked at the press, and now he dusted it off and shared it with his family.  His musical talent encompassed many instruments - steel guitar, acoustic guitar, organ, piano and voice.

Nineteen years later, in 2016, they moved to Hendersonville.  It was not long after that Joyce was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.  Bob faithfully cared for her through several years.  After Joyce had a stroke, her health declined, and she passed away December 6, 2020.  Bob and she had been married 71 years, 7 months, 1 week and 6 days.

Unfortunately, Bob contracted COVID in early 2021 and wasn’t able to overcome it.  It was difficult to let go, but he knew that one day soon he would see his friend Jesus, Joyce, and the rest of his family that he loved dearly.

Bob is survived by four sons, Bob Jr and Denise, La Quinta, California; Richard and Linda, Cameron Park, California; Steve and Cindy, Hot Springs, North Carolina; and Dan and Karen, Sonora, California; 13 grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren.

He was loved by all and will be greatly missed!