Opinion

DAZE WORK: Neighbors give Bob Sedlack chance to say goodbye

Thursday, August 5, 2021
Flanked by daughter Catherine Hayek and her husband Tom of St. Louis, longtime Greencastle resident Bob Sedlack has a chance to renew acquaintances with neighbors and friends before saying goodbye to his Anderson Street neighborhood after nearly 50 years.
Banner Graphic/ERIC BERNSEE

Greencastle’s Anderson Street neighborhood is losing its rock, one of its cornerstones and a friend to neighbors for nearly the last 50 years.

On a drizzly, gray Saturday afternoon, Bob Sedlack, slipping his lanky frame into one of those plastic deck chairs, held court in the “party garage” of his home at the northwest corner of Anderson and Arlington streets as neighbors, friends and associates brought their kids, their grandchildren and even their dogs over to say goodbye.

The 83-year-old Sedlack, who now resides in St. Louis with his own place 10-15 minutes from daughter Catherine Hayek and her husband Tom, hugged the kids and chatted them up in a casual manner belying the intensity he often brought to his career as a longtime DePauw University professor or his legacy of public service as a 14-year member of the Greencastle City Council.

Brewmaster neighbor Chris Weeks, accompanied by his dog, asked Sedlack if he enjoyed brown ales.

Told he did, Weeks offered to bring by a growler of Wasser’s finest later.

“How could I say no to that?” Sedlack smiled and laughed, enjoying the trip down memory lane.

For more than 45 years, as one of the first to greet new residents, organizers of a neighborhood progressive dinner and quick to provide reminders of election deadlines and more, Bob and Ellen Sedlack were cornerstones of the Anderson Street neighborhood. Rocks even. But more on that later.

Explaining the motivation for what she called “National Bob Sedlack Day, neighbor Cathy Merrell said, “He didn’t get to say goodbye.”

Sedlack, who came back to Greencastle last weekend with his daughter and son-in-law for the 25th anniversary of the Putnam County Public Library expansion which late wife Ellen spearheaded, had planned to have a hip replacement in March and would go to St. Louis for four or five weeks recovery.

“But the doctor who opened me up found this massive infection,” Sedlack said. “He called it a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ discovery, which is certainly not something you ever want to hear your doctor say.”

So instead of the hip replacement, Sedlack spent the next six weeks with an antibiotic pump in his shoulder, followed by a regimen of antibiotic tablets.

Now it’s his knee that needs to be replaced, but that’s a ”Catch 22,” he says.

He needs to be off antibiotics in order to undergo the replacement surgery, but he has“to stay on antibiotics “to keep the infection at bay.”

The last few years certainly have not been overly kind to Sedlack, who lost son Robert to ALS in May 2015 and wife Ellen in January 2017. The COVID quarantine came along soon after and Sedlack found himself trapped at hone with only his memories but embraced by neighbors and their children, who would write messages of encouragement in chalk on the sidewalk in front of his home.

Leaving that house and those memories has become more essential now with Sedlack unable to navigate the stairs very easily with his bedroom and bathroom on the second floor.

Bob Sedlack
Banner Graphic/ERIC BERNSEE

The Sedlacks, who came to Greencastle in 1964 when Bob joined the DePauw faculty as an English professor, moved to the Anderson Street home in 1973. He hasn’t put the house up for sale yet and friends Barb and Jerry Sadler are watching over it for him. Plans are for a brief return in October to procure more belongings, which could change that status.

“This house owes us nothing,” Sedlack said of the only home his children really ever knew growing up.

Maneuvering around now aided by a walker after a nasty recent tumble left him with bandages on his forearm and elbow, Sedlack was philosophical about the whole thing.

“It’s not the first time I’ve fallen,” he assured, “and I’ve learned that it’s not the falling (that’s bad), it’s the landing.”

He’s also a cancer survivor, having beaten prostate cancer in 1997, and been a Relay for Life speaker in the aftermath.

“Over my lifetime I realize I’ve had a heck of a lot of surgeries, and they’ve all been successful,” Sedlack mentioned, adding carpal tunnel and couple others to his list.

For 49 years, 1964-2002, Sedlack taught at DePauw, witnessing “an enormous physical change” in the campus that when he arrived was ringed by little shops and even the Double Decker restaurant.

“The physical change in campus over the last 50 years has astounded me,” he added.

He looks back on DePauw as “a good place, a good college, a good atmosphere with good students, some of whom even remember me fondly.”

Sedlack had opportunities to leave Greencastle and DePauw over the years, he confided, but not wanting to leave behind colleagues and good friends and a nice, safe place to live, he always decided against it.

“Being originally from Chicago, we still locked our back door, even though a lot of people didn’t,” Sedlack said.

His legacy on the City Council -- 14 years spread over 25 in serving four mayors -- might be the wars of words wherein he went toe-to-toe first with fellow Councilman Bobby Albright and later with David Masten as covering the City Council back then was as entertaining as it was enlightening.

A staunch Democrat, Sedlack nonetheless said he “in many ways genuinely liked” both Albright and Masten.

Of his City Council legacy, Sedlack said he is probably proudest of the smoking ordinance he helped enact.

“Over 14 years, we really only had a handful of contentious issues,” he recalled. “The smoking ordinance was probably the most contentious.”

Sedlack recalled researching the ordinances enacted by Bloomington and Plainfield, the latter of which did not have the number of clubs like the Elks, Moose, Eagles, Legion and VFW Greencastle did.

Talking to folks at Bloomington and Plainfield, they shared that they felt as though restaurants and bars benefited from the ordinance, attracting more people when they became no-smoking venues.

“The (Greencastle) lodges were up in arms about the smoking ordinance,” he noted, but a compromise was reached when Sedlack suggested making an exception for social clubs, but only when they were serving as social clubs, not when they were hosting public events or serving as polling places. That allowed the smoking measure to pass by a 3-2 vote.

Meanwhile, about that rock comment ...

Turns out the Sedlacks were instrumental in helping the Anderson Street neighborhood kids learn their boundaries.

“When the neighborhood kids were learning to ride their bikes, we’d tell them, ‘don’t go past Bob and Ellen’s rock,’” Cathy Merrell said of the rock at the corner of Anderson and Alington streets.

And if youngsters thought about testing those boundaries, Bob was usually out the on the front porch to set them straight.

Like a rock.

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  • Great article for a great man from the DePauw family. While I never had him as a professor in my time at DePauw, I did have some fellow students who would recall his classes as being challenging. Good luck and best wishes, sir.

    -- Posted by infiremanemt on Fri, Aug 6, 2021, at 9:34 AM
  • Great neighbor, great person. Wish I could've been there. Bon Voyage, Bob.

    -- Posted by Old Soul on Fri, Aug 6, 2021, at 3:00 PM
  • *

    Thank you, Bob... for all the good you brought to our community.

    -- Posted by Bunny1E on Fri, Aug 6, 2021, at 4:13 PM
  • Bob,you will be missed more than you know! It's a shame the local Democrats didn't honor his years of service !!

    -- Posted by Falcon9 on Sat, Aug 7, 2021, at 12:16 PM
  • We go to St. Paul's and have missed seeing Mr. Sedlack. Really happy to hear he is with family. We will miss his smiling face at mass and wish him the very best! Didn't know him well, but he was always so kind to my family.

    -- Posted by Jlandry5804 on Sat, Aug 7, 2021, at 3:31 PM
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