The Daily Egyptian is published by the students of SIU at Carbondale. Except during vacations and exam weeks, The Daily Egyptian is published Monday through Friday during the fall and spring semesters and TWThF during the summer semester."

Campus Flag Master Bob Reid gets around

In the beginning, Bob Reid simply needed some wheels. Not too many. Two would be sufficient.

That was almost 40 years ago, and Bob had seen the inside of too many cabs and had done about all the walking he was interested in. Unfortunately, a driver's license was out of the question. The cerebral palsy he was born with 30 years earlier made steering a car an impossible task, and besides, he had given up on that when he was in high school. He knew it wasn't going to happen.

But Bob, working as a teacher for the mentally handicapped at the Dixon State School in Dixon, needed to do something.

Town was two miles away from the school, and with the holidays coming up, the air was getting icier each day.

Bob, determined to get himself around, rounded up some money, made his way to a local second-hand shop and bought himself a bicycle.

It was a blue Schwinn.

He doesn't remember what it cost.

He does remember learning to ride it, though.

When Bob was in grade school, his father had bought him a bike, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not stay balanced on it.

Again, the palsy was the culprit.

His hands shook, his mind trembled and his body simply refused to do it.

This time around, it began the same way, with Bob teetering to stay on the seat long enough to declare victory.

Needless to say, he didn't get it the first time around.

But he refused to give up.

Bob began taking to the school gymnasium during his lunch hours, riding slowly and methodically along the walls, trying over and over again to find his balance.

At first, it was trial and a whole lot of error. He couldn't do it. He rubbed his knuckles raw from scraping against the wall, and with each topple from the seat, his frustration grew.

One day, though, Bob finally got it. He got on the seat, put his feet to the pedals and took off. To his surprise, he kept going without falling, and ever since, Bob has been an enthusiastic bike rider.

"I got it through my head I could do it," Bob says of the experience now. "I'm proud of it when I look back at it.

"If you're persistent with anything you set your mind to, you'll accomplish it."

That was ages ago, and Bob is now a much older man.

Still, he gets around on a bike.

Although his back and hips pain him, making each step on foot a slow, crooked crawl, he is a force to be reckoned with when sitting behind the handlebars. It is more comfortable. His speed makes him seem decades younger than his 68 years.

You've probably seen Bob and his bike on campus. Pretty much everybody has. For almost a dozen years, he has been SIUC's voluntary flag master, waking in the early morning hours to raise the flags on campus and leaving his house again at dinnertime to take them all down. It's become a tradition for him, and if nothing else, it's a reason to get up early each morning.

Plus, everyone needs a little sport from time to time.

"I like to run people over," Bob says with a wicked grin. "It's fun to hit co-eds. I've got five so far today. Sometimes I'll help them at night if I see them."

Some insight on this twisted individual:

Robert Homer Reid was born on Dec. 2, 1936 in Chicago. His father, an employee at Woolworth's, was periodically on the move, and by the time Bob was starting the first grade, he was living in Kewanee. When the time came to begin high school, he was in another town. Needless to say, adaptation was a must.

Compounding that was the cerebral palsy, a brain disorder Bob was born with that always made him a little different from everyone else. For the most part, he says kids at school were warily sympathetic of him, refraining from bullying him but acknowledging that his slow speech and disjointed sentences made him more than irregular. Occasionally, someone would act out against him. It was the exception to the standard, but it didn't bother Bob too much. The disease was a part of him, and the best he could do was live with it.

"I couldn't defend myself," Bob says. "I was too slow. [The disease] was worse when I was smaller. I've made lots of progress, but I'll never be rid of it."

Regardless, Bob made the best he could of it. Although he admittedly had to put handfuls of dreams on the back burner, kids got used to Bob, he got used to them, and by the time he was in high school, he was doing his own thing. He served as manager for the Annawan High School football and basketball teams, and when the time came to graduate, he was ready to go off to college.

Bob came to SIUC in 1957. He wanted to be a teacher. One day, the dean of his college called him in and compassionately presented him with the stark truth. In order to be a teacher, three things are necessary: good handwriting, clear verbal communication and the ability to speak with parents. From the dean's perspective, Bob had none of them. He suggested that Bob take a major in outdoor education. Bob took the advice and moved on.

In 1963, he graduated from SIUC. Afterward, he received his teacher's certification from Northern Illinois University and even took some classes at Illinois State University, where one professor harshly warned him his handicap would prevent him from ever being a teacher.

No matter. Bob did find work as a teacher in the 1970s at the Dixon State School, where he worked with mentally handicapped people who helped put his own disease into perspective, and that, perhaps combined with his bike lessons, gave Bob a different lease on life.

"They needed a slow person to relate to them," Bob says. "They were so slow. It's hard to accept a person who's 40 with the mind of a 2-year-old. You are teaching babies, but I tried my best. My handicap was a gift there."

About that time, Bob got some bad news.

His father had suffered a heart attack and died, and although he had been sick for quite a while, the news hit Bob hard. For weeks, he stopped eating, slipping into an almost insurmountable depression. Finally, his boss told him that he needed to get his life back together, and hesitantly Bob began to turn things back around.

He worked for a while longer in Dixon and eventually moved on to another mental health facility in Jacksonville. There, he worked successfully as a teacher until 1991. After that, the best that can be said is that whimsy took hold of Bob. Something about the coloring of the Southern Illinois leaves in fall and the way Carbondale wakes up in the summer grabbed him. That year, he bought a house on Forest Street and rented it out until he was ready to move in. After dealing with a $700 water bill and cat feces left on the carpeting, Bob moved into his new home in 1993.

He was back in Saluki country again.

Now, Bob is an SIUC fixture. Looking for a way to stay active in the life of the campus, Bob volunteered with the Physical Plant for anything he might be able to do. In 1993, he began his steady rounds with the flags on campus. He still stops to salute the main flagpole in front of Altgeld Hall each morning after raising the flag to the top.

Lately, the mornings have been cold. When Bob begins his campus rounds around 7 a.m., bitter winds meet him on his long ride to campus, and he admits that on the days when there is rain or the cold is simply too much to deal with, the Physical Plant takes over. After all, he says, he's getting pretty old. His morning marathons are work for the young.

His hands shake when he raises the flag up the poles - a combination of the stinging cold and his lifelong disease. For all the discomfort that may appear on the surface, however, Bob loves making his daily rounds, and he loves talking to friends along the way.

There are secretaries and cafeteria workers. Friday, he met with Chancellor Walter Wendler in his Anthony Hall office. And lately, he's noticed a steady stream of students trailing behind him. Film students, photographers and even newspaper reporters follow him for a story or a class project or on deadline.

If he is now a campus icon, it is because he wrote the role for himself.

Beside flying the flags on a daily basis, Bob was also instrumental in repairing the clock on Pulliam Hall in 1995, when he led a drive to install lights on the tower and crusaded to get the chimes ringing again. Now, Pulliam is nothing short of a campus symbol. By extension, so is Bob.

Bob says he is a people person. This is only partly true. For all of his campus socializing, for all the faces he meets on a daily basis, he is very much the loner. He never married, and his only family member is a sister in California. Just look at these photos. In each, Bob stands alone. This is not coincidence, and in fact, Daily Egyptian photographer Anthony Soufflé told this reporter that it was next to impossible to photograph Bob next to other people. It was simply not a moment that happened very often.

As a result, we see Bob here as most people see him.

Silently riding on his bike.

But don't get us wrong - Bob has friends all across Carbondale. There is the community at First United Methodist Church, the swimming class he takes three days a week and what he considers one of his greatest friends of all: Southern Illinois University.

At the end of the day, Bob says that friendship makes it all worth it.

And as a result, he keeps on riding.

"It's a prideful job," Bob says. "I am proud to do it."

 

 

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