Bob Marshall

A funeral service for Bob will be held Tuesday, July 5, 2022 from 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM at Lima Family Santa Clara Mortuary, 466 North Winchester Blvd, Santa Clara, CA 95050. Following the funeral service will be a committal service from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM at Mission City Memorial Park, 420 N Winchester Blvd, Santa Clara, CA 95050.

Click "See More" to read his biography and scroll down to see photos from Bob's life. Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.limafamilysantaclara.com for the MARSHALL family.

Robert Allen Marshall (Bob) was born on July 25, 1952 to Fred and Nell Marshall in Atlanta, Georgia. He had an almost 8-year- old big brother, Fred, and a 2 ½-year-old big sister, Betsy. He would be joined by a little brother, Dave, two years and one day later, setting up a childhood tradition (for better or worse) of shared birthdays with his sibling. Like all the Marshall kids, he began attending church when he was about 10 days old and family life revolved around church and school and playing in the neighborhood with his friends. Family vacations featured camping trips to national parks, which laid the foundation for Bob’s love of nature.

When Bob was 8 years old, racial tensions and violent protests about integrating the schools in Georgia was reaching a fever pitch. Bob’s dad was a radio science engineer at Georgia Tech, where the president announced that he would close the college before allowing a black student to enroll. There were even conflicts at church, where my parents and their friends attempted to accompany a black family into the morning worship service, only to have the ushers bodily escort the visiting family back out the door. This was not how Bob’s parents wanted to raise their children, for they believed that the myriad of skin colors are just a reflection of the infinite shades of beauty found in their Creator God. So, in the summer of 1960, Bob’s dad took a job at Stanford University in California and moved the family across country in a move that would change all of their lives.

They bought a home in the Cupertino Union school district that was known for its excellence and Bob immediately started third grade in a new school right across the street from his new house. He made friends with boys in the neighborhood, including Bill Riddle next door, whose birthday was July 24, and John Paizis, whose birthday was July 27. So, now birthdays were celebrated 4 days in a row, or all together in one big party. Bob was never going to have his own birthday party at this rate!

Bob excelled in all his schooling, especially in math. He never shied away from a challenge, which perhaps is the reason for him choosing Chinese in high school as his foreign language, when everyone else was taking Spanish, French or German. He earned his letterman’s sweater in track and cross country at Homestead High School, where he had some interesting classmates, some rather nerdy guys named Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

In 1970 Bob began his college studies at Stanford University where he earned a degree in Math and Lockheed-Martin hired him right out of college. Seeing his potential, Lockheed paid for him to return to Stanford to get a Master’s Degree in Statistics and Computer Sciences. He worked his entire career at Lockheed, an unusual thing at the time during the Silicon Valley tech boom, where people changed jobs almost as frequently as their underwear.

But Bob would surely say that the most important thing that happened to him in the ‘70’s was that the youth group at church was holding a car wash in cooperation with the youth group of another local church, and it was there that a cute, blonde girl, Barbara Mason, caught his eye. He had seen her before, but this time some kind of car wash magic happened and they both were taken by the other and began to date. On September 11, 1976 they were married at that same church.

In time, Bob and Barb made two other very significant and lasting contributions to this life: their son, Justin was born in 1981, followed by a spunky little sister named Angela, in 1984. Justin and Angela were two of nine cousins in the Marshall family and every memory of Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving during those years include cousin get-togethers, as Bob and Barb would always be a part of family celebrations.

In 1990, Bob and Barb moved to Cool, California, seeking out a more small-town experience for raising their family. However, Bob continued to commute to Sunnyvale for 3 days a week, staying at his Dad’s house Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and working from home on Monday and Friday. So, in a way, Bob started the trend of remote work!

In 2004, Angela gave birth to a cute baby boy, Austin, and Bob and Barb became grandparents. They delighted in spending time with him, taking him to Awana programs at church, going on vacations, and spending family holidays together. Austin is a happy young man with a great sense of humor, which made things interesting, because Bob was a very logical thinker and often didn’t really appreciate jokes – much like his own dad. Many times he would scratch his head trying to figure out what everyone was laughing about.

Since his days in the cherub choir at church, Bob loved music. When YouTube became a thing, Bob decided that he would utilize that channel to share videos that he made of songs that he liked. Barb was an excellent photographer and they loved to hike and travel to see some of the beauty this world has to offer, and he often included Barb’s photos in his videos. He spent hours trying to find just the right picture or illustration to accompany the words to songs. Today, his YouTube channel has over 168,000 subscribers and 1500 videos – and of course, if you asked him, he could tell you the statistics he kept on which videos got the most “likes” and the trends and times of year that his “likes” spiked.

Bob was no stranger to loss. The unexpected death of his mom in 1986 and his dad’s death in 2013 had a profound impact on him, as it did on his whole family. Music helped him to grapple with some of his losses. Here’s something he shared at his dad’s funeral about Chris Tomlin’s song, “I Will Rise”:

A few days after Dad passed away, I was driving through the canyon on Highway 49, and I had a “vision”, or a waking dream, of Dad arriving in heaven and being reunited with Mom. It was pretty powerful, and I had to pull over to the side of the road. Once I recovered and pulled back onto the road, the song “I Will Rise” came on the radio. I was overcome and had to pull over again.

But his most stunning loss happened just 5 months ago, when his beloved wife, Barb, passed away suddenly from an aneurysm. Bob tried to push through his grief by expanding his involvement in 3 different churches, attending GriefShare and several Celebrate Recovery groups, trying to keep busy and not isolate himself. He made lots of videos in tribute to Barb on his YouTube channel and tried to pull his life together. He missed her deeply and even struggled with how to organize his days, saying, “I would just always get up in the morning and Barb would tell me what we were going to do that day. Now, I have to figure that out myself.”

For years, Bob struggled with medical issues that took a serious toll on his body. He worked through various treatment plans, but as his disease progressed, he began to be hospitalized every few months. After his most recent hospitalization, Justin brought him home from the hospital on June 6 and after getting him settled, returned to his own home. That was the last time anyone had contact with Bob. His body was found at home by friends on June 9, where he was kneeling by the sofa in his living room. Perhaps he was praying for God’s help? We will never know.

What we do know, and that Bob would plainly tell you, is that no one goes to heaven on the basis of living a good life. Jesus said that the only ones who enter heaven are those who have been born again, that is, they’ve entered into a new life because they’ve accepted the fact of their own sin and received the gracious gift of Christ paying the penalty for their sins. Bob was born again, as he was not shy about telling you, and in a sense, when he died that first week in June, it was like a birthday into life on The Other Side, where he was reunited with Barb, with his parents, and, of course, Jesus. He finally got to have his own birthday!