We are Family

Matthew James Campbell’s impending arrival took my mother out of college. She was a very bright student, and quite popular at State College Area High School, a young woman who was nice to everyone and had more friends than she probably knew she had. Dad described himself as “a bit of a hoodlum.” He’d gotten into a bit of trouble, but foster family life had taken that wild streak out of him. Mom’s 45 records include Jan and Dean and Pat Boone, while Dad had Iron Butterfly and Jimi Hendrix. If Matthew’s appearance took my mom out of school, his condition (first diagnosed nearly two years later) kept her out of it. By the time they knew what they had on their hands with Matt, Mom was pregnant with my sister. Pregnant with another child, she listened to the doctor drolly inform her that Matthew would “never read, never be able to dress himself, never tie his shoes,” and by the way did she want to consider termination of the impending pregnancy? In tears, she emphatically told him no.

Barbara Ellen Campbell was born in 1975. By 1978, it was clear she had none of the same condition Matthew struggled with. Somewhat by surprise, somewhat by plan, I was conceived and born in April of 1979. I was something of a good luck charm for my father. A lifelong Pittsburgh sports fan, the “Steel Curtain” Steelers won the Super Bowl for the fourth time and the “We are Family” Pirates won the World Series the year I was born. By the time I arrived, Mom had successfully officiated a reconciliation between my dad and his father. James Howard Campbell, my grandfather, passed away when I was 2. I don't remember him, but he apparently got a kick out of me. In the years before he died, my grandfather turned his life around through AA and became heavily involved in counseling other alcoholics. Hundreds of people showed up at his funeral that no one in the family knew - they were his friends from AA.

I am Robert Burke Campbell. My first name is an homage to my Uncle Rob and my mother’s Uncle Bobby. Uncle Bobby was also a sensitive soul, artistic and soft-spoken. He was my grandmother’s only brother. She had a good many half-siblings, but she and Bobby were the youngest, and the son and daughter of her father’s new wife. As this was uncommon in America in those days, those siblings were never so close with each other as they were with their natural full siblings. Lydia Hueston, my grandmother, was closest to Robert, her natural brother. Tragically, Uncle Bobby died young in an automobile accident. The Huestons were full-blooded English people, and in spite of her natural reserve, I could see the hurt and love in my grandmother’s smiling English eyes every time she spoke of him. My middle name, Burke, comes from my mother’s father. Eugene Burke Herman was the son of Burke Herman. Their family was German through and through. Gene and brother Charlie served proudly as Americans in World War II, though. My middle name is also a nod to my uncle’s name, which is itself a nod to Robert Burns, the famous Scottish poet quite popular with Scots immigrant families like the Frizzells and Campbells. Lastly, my dad insists I am partly named for Roberto Clemente, the Puerto Rican Pirates rightfielder and posthumous Hall of Famer. Clemente pioneered the idea of the famous athlete as humanitarian. He died in the 1970s in an airplane crash while taking supplies to Nicarauguan earthquake victims.

I knew all of these stories intimately by the age of nine. We were a caring and sharing family. My mom was a talker and a nurturer. She still is. When I was seven, she finished her Bachelor’s in English at Wilkes University. At the graduation ceremony it was very hot, and the sun melted paint on the bleachers, and I got grey paint on my favorite navy dress pants. But I was proud of my Mom more than I was concerned about the pants.