If you have read my book, Between the Fire and the Rain,  you will remember two key friends from my days in Broderick: Stevie, with whom I would collect golf balls with his brother Mark and sell the golf balls to golfers through the chain link fence at Riverbend Golf Course, and Robert who was my best friend in 8th grade.

 

Stevie, who nowadays goes by Steve, lives in Vacaville, and after I wrote my book I found him on the internet and sent him a copy. Following that we spoke on the phone a couple times.

 

Robert, you will recall, died and for 49 years it was a mystery exactly what happened to him. Over the years I would on occasion try to find something about him on the internet, but with the name Robert Foster it was just impossible as the name is too common, and he died a long time before the internet came along. In recent months I attempted again, trying various web sites for vital statistics and death certificates, but kept coming up empty handed.

 

In mid-July 2018, after I was done writing the book, I decided to hire a private investigator named Anna Stowe in the Sacramento area and asked her to locate his date of death and the cemetery where he is buried as I wanted to go visit him. I shared with her what little I could recall of him, which was not much to go on. Because he was a minor, and especially because he was a ward of the state in a foster home, there were extra challenges in finding out any information on him, even where he was buried.

 

Nonetheless, I signed a retainer agreement with her, I paid her fee, and she began her search. Every day I would pray, “Lord, please help Anna find Robert.” A week went by, nothing. Then she sent me an email asking additional questions. I could not answer many, and I said to her that based upon the types of questions she was asking me I suspected she was having trouble finding him. But she responded, no, she had a couple good leads, she was just waiting for confirmation.

 

Then, another week went by and late in the evening of August 1st Anna sent me an email letting me know she found him! She provided me with a lot of information that had been a mystery to me for 49 years. The next day on my own I found an article on line from the little newspaper in Placerville in the county where he died which told the sad story of how he drowned on his birthday on July 8, 1969.

 

On August 7th  I met Steve in Sacramento. Steve also considered Robert a good friend. Together we went to the cemetery in Roseville to visit Robert. Steve brought along some garden tools to help clean up some overgrown grass, he brought cleaner to clean the marker, and some flowers to place at the grave. I brought along some chairs, cokes, and some of my leftover birthday cake, and we hung out with Robert for a couple hours. Robert is buried next to a half-sister, Jane, and he apparently has other family members buried in the same cemetery.

 

In my book I said that Robert drowned in the Sacramento River and Steve thought the same thing. I don’t know if that was an assumption I had made since we lived next to that river, or if it was something my mother had told me because she was the one that told me Robert died. In the newspaper article you will see that Robert actually died in El Dorado County, a 90-minute drive east of where we lived.

 

For half a century I knew very little about how or even when Robert died. Recently, I have learned a lot; about his family life, when he was born, how he came to be in foster care, who was with him when he died, where he died, the day he died, and even visited his grave. When Steve and I visited we noticed the concrete foundation of the marker was broken. The following week I had it repaired and visited the grave again on August 18th to check on the results. I hope the family is happy with the repairs, although I don't even know if anyone is still in the area to visit him.

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His family knew him as Bobby. Steve and I always knew him as Robert. I said in my book I would never forget him. It is wonderful after all these years to finally know what happened to him and to be able to visit him.