We are sorry to announce the passing of our dad, Bob Manigian, on Sunday, April 19. In the last year of his life our father had greater and greater difficulty remembering parts of his life, so my sister and I would like to recall some of it for him.
He was born Robert Armand Manigian on June 12, 1936, to Zareh (Zeke) and Elizabeth Manigian. He was the first born son and was followed by his sister Lois then brother Alan. If you knew him as a child you would have called him Bobby, friends for most of his adult life called him Bob, and some in his business life may have known him as Robert. If you knew him in his last two eccentric years, you would have known him as Robér. He was always a well dressed man in tailored suits who read the New York Times every day and he was a dedicated NY Giants fan who held season tickets since the early 1960s.
Our dad grew up in Newark, N.J., where he hung out with "The 14th Avenue Gang." Then lightning struck in 1959, when he met our mother, “my little fire cracker” he called her. They were married in 1963. In 1964 my sister Tara was born and in 1965 I was born.
Our dad was a hard working and honest man. In the 1970s he worked as an insurance adjuster during the weekdays and often would take carpet installation jobs on the weekends. In 1976 we moved to Sparta, N.J., and in 1979 he was invited to become a partner by Harry Laufer in his company. I feel the 1980s and early 1990s were his boom years. He was deeply in love with our mother, his business was doing well, they had two kids in high school and he would meet the guys for handball twice a week. Then all of life was shattered in 1997 when our mother was diagnosed with cancer and passed away three months later. Heartbroken and devastated, he was never the same. I think he cried everyday for the first couple of years. Then the death of his business partner, Harry, before the economic crash of ’07, which he could never financially recover from.
In the last couple years of his life he enjoyed eating at his favorite restaurant in town and flirting with the ladies who all called him Robér. “Why be ordinary?” he said, “Let’s liven it up a bit.”
I will remember him as a generous, even-keeled man, whose emotional reserve was the perfect balance to our mother’s lively passion, both of whom had a grounded sense of decency and fairness. I will remember a man who was in love with his wife. I will remember times that he laughed so hard he cried. I will remember the times he would pick me up from college to dive me home for mom’s home cooking. I will remember how handsome he looked at my sister’s wedding. I will remember going to Giants games with him on cold Saturday afternoons in the fall. I will remember telling him that I loved him right before his heart surgery. I will remember him cleaning the storm windows every year. I will remember him taking me to see jazz at the Blue Note and Village Vanguard. I will remember him playing Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Nancy Wilson, Carmen McRae, and of course, Shirley Bassey at dinner time.
My sister and I both feel blessed that they were our parents, and although we are heartbroken to be in the world without them, we are heartened to feel they are united and we know they are both in our hearts and live through us and our children and all who knew both of them throughout their lives.
“Pop-pop Bob” will always be the reference and example to his three grandsons, Dax, Sam, and Oscar, as to what it means to be a good man, a dedicated father, a loving husband, a hard-working and honest man in business, in all he was a solid, loving and decent man. Thank you to my sister for all she did for him in the last year and especially in the last month of his life, I am so grateful to you and so happy he was able to die at home where so many of his memories where made. To his sister Lois and Aunt Gayle for checking in on him often and thank you for all those who were praying for him during this month, my sister and I truly feel it made a difference for him, and for us.