Robert Charles Welch

Robert Charles Welch, husband of 60 years, father of two, a retired draftsman and salesman known for his humor and kindness, died in his Myrtle Beach home on Sunday, December 17, 2023, after a year-long battle with liver and pancreatic cancer. He was 84.

Welch, formerly of Auburn, New York, loved his family and his church and fixing things and watching sports documentaries and had a particular fondness for Danny DeVito, with whom he shared a certain physical stature. Welch was the consummate short, big-hearted funny man. After a black bear was spotted at a family reunion, he donned a furry mask and ambled past a living room window to taunt the guests inside. Just hours before he died, when a normally chatty family member called and asked how he was feeling, he quipped, “That was only one question. Where are the other 19?” 

Welch collected nicknames. His daughter called him “Papa Bear.” A nephew dubbed him "The Quiet Assassin" because of his piercing wit and success at cards. One set of nieces still called him “Uncle Snowman” well into their 50s because he’d been the adult most willing to take them out as kids to play in the snow. As a teenager, friends called Welch “Mousey,” because he’d break into pal Ed Maitland’s locker and sneak off with his lunch. 

Welch was born on January 31, 1939, the youngest of four children, the only boy in an Irish Catholic family. He played four years of varsity baseball at Weedsport High School, where he was known more for being the class cut-up than for his academic prowess. But he was smart and had a work ethic, digging up night crawlers to sell to fishermen, setting pins at a local bowling alley and regularly mowing a wealthy neighbor’s huge lawn for cash. 

In 11th grade, Welch let it be known that he would say yes if studious classmate Barbara Tallman asked him to a Sadie Hawkins dance. She did, in part, because she found him amusing. The pair began dating, going to movies in "the Mud Puppy,” the dirty beige Chevrolet Welch shared with his sister, Thelma. After graduation, in 1957, Tallman went away to college. With no money for school, Welch entered a five-year apprenticeship to draft blueprints and later joined the Air National Guard. The pair married in 1963, eventually adopted two children, a boy and a girl, from two separate families two years apart to the day, and then settled in northern Virginia where Welch was a traveling salesman, marketing traffic control systems—everything from streetlights to stop and yield signs—to cities, states and counties from North Carolina to West Virginia. 

Over the next few decades he’d relocate, first with the family and then just with Barbara, to Kansas City, Pennsylvania, Florida and South Carolina, always finding sanctuary in Episcopal or Lutheran churches, which he’d started attending in the late 1960s after being informed that it’d make adopting children easier. He welcomed newcomers, worked on programs to help struggling families and the homeless, helped rebuild a church burned by an arsonist and traveled to Guatemala on a medical mission.

In his spare time, he read spy novels, made beds and toys and other gifts out of wood and never lost his love for sports. He taught both kids to throw a baseball, coached soccer and basketball teams and spent many NFL seasons texting his daughter humorous critiques of the on-field shenanigans. He would have been mildly disappointed that he died 24 hours before his Philadelphia Eagles lost to the lowly Seattle Seahawks, but laughed heartily days earlier when his daughter, an even bigger Philly fan, reminded him that he at least had lived long enough to see the Eagles actually win a Super Bowl. 

Welch was preceded in death by his parents, Gertrude (Harrington) Garhartt and Charles Welch; a stepfather, Albert Garhartt; and sisters Elizabeth “Betty” Bush, Shirley Guzewicz and Thelma Gannon, who passed earlier this year. He is survived by his wife, Barbara (Tallman) Welch, daughter Lisa Welch McGowan and son-in-law Mark McGowan, all of Myrtle Beach; son Craig Welch, daughter-in-law Jennifer Langston and granddaughter Edie Catherine Welch, of Seattle; stepbrother Albert Garhartt Jr.; and many nieces and nephews. 

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Shepherd of the Sea ELCA Church, 2637 US Hwy 17 Business, Garden City, South Carolina, 29576 or Resurrection House Mission, Inc., a nonprofit, at 37240 Calle De Milagros, Dade City, FL 33523.

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