Robert Bigelow

Robert (Bob) Bigelow passed away peacefully in the presence of family on May 21, 2025. Bob was born November 25, 1947 to Dorothy and Cecil Bigelow. He spent his most of his youth and young adult life in Mankato, MN. He found a love of athletics early on and usually had a ball in his hand, whether playing a sport or an invented game.

He attended Hamline University, where he lettered in basketball, football, and tennis. He won the Minnesota intercollegiate singles title three years in a row. In 1990, he was inducted into Hamline’s Athletic Hall of Fame. He continued to play tennis into his adult years, playing in tournaments and for fun. As he got older, he competed less, but still enjoyed meeting young players at the courts, beating them, and then helping them with their game.

After graduating from Hamline, Bob enlisted in the Army, where he served in Germany in the early 1970s. In 1974, he married Joan, with whom he would spend the next 50 years. They moved to Houston, where he pursued his graduate education at Rice University and the University of Texas.

Once he completed his PhD in biometrics, Bob, Joan, and their two young daughters moved to Delaware, where he would begin a 30-year professional career as a statistician in the pharmaceutical industry. During that time, a job transfer gave him the opportunity to move his family to Switzerland for 4 years, where they enjoyed hiking, skiing, riding bikes, and taking train trips.

Bob was an excellent statistician. He worked hard and took pride in his work, valuing the importance of professional ethics and correct interpretation of clinical data. This mindset spilled over into his home life, where taught his daughters the wisdom of using all available data to make careful and ethical decisions.

While often soft spoken himself, Bob had an amazing ability to make connections with people he met, asking them the right questions so that they would open up and he could get to know them. Because of this, he made friends everywhere he went. He would often come home with a story of someone he met on a bus, in a hallway, or on a park bench.

He was extremely proud of the family he and Joan built together. His wife and daughters were unquestionably his top priority. When his kids were young, he was often seen on the sidelines coaching or cheering on a soccer team. He never missed a marching band halftime show, and covered countless miles on I-95 driving to visit his daughters when they were in college.

Bob left the pharmaceutical industry when he retired from Sanofi in 2010. After about 6 months, he decided that retirement wasn’t a great fit for him. He found a job with the Duke Clinical Research Institute, allowing him to share his years of expertise in drug development in a new setting, and affording him and Joan the opportunity to live closer to their daughters in North Carolina. More than ten years later, when he retired again, Chapel Hill had become their permanent home.

One thing Bob enjoyed most was going out for breakfast, whether it was trying a new spot while traveling or placing his usual order at a favorite spot where they knew him by name. Though he no longer lived in Minnesota, he and his family continued to spend time there every summer. He took pride in teaching his sons-in-law to fish, in search of the elusive walleye.

Bob is survived by his wife, Joan, daughters Jamie (Brian) Crandell and Christy Bigelow (Alan Laws), and five grandchildren. He is also survived by two sisters, Mary Bigelow and Janine (Jeremiah) Bumgarner, and four nephews. In his final years, he delighted in his grandchildren, who saw him often, filling his house with lively noise and his calendar with more soccer games, band concerts, piano recitals, and track meets.

Bob was a devoted member of the United Methodist Church. Donations in his memory can be sent to Appalachia Service Project, a volunteer home repair and replacement ministry in Central Appalachia where Bob served on many trips: Appalachia Service Project https://asphome.org/give/

Or to one of the congregations with which he was involved: Hockessin United Methodist Church, Hockessin, DE https://hockessinumc.org/ University United Methodist Church, Chapel Hill, NC https://universityumc.church/

A service will be held in Minnesota in July.