What Bobby lacked in social stature and physical gifts, he compensated for in terms of a derring-do that teetered from raw courage to reckless endeavor. He took readily to an existentialist’s creed of molding one’s life out of the materials of the given time and space of one’s days while clinging tenaciously to a Catholic faith in the Almighty, a faith put constantly in peril by the tragedies of the human plight. He was drawn to Greek philosophy and Shakespearean drama, which matched his gallows humor—witticism in the face of woe, poetry to placate the pain.
