Bob Hamilton

Bob Hamilton passed away at his Jewel Lake home Friday, December 30. He was 80. He was born July 1, 1931 in Sitka, Alaska to Frank and Francis Hamilton. He lived in various locations in the Northwest as a child, and graduated from West Valley High School in Spokane Valley in 1949. Bob met his wife of 60 years in grade school, and they married in 1951 at the Millwood Presbyterian Church in Spokane Valley. He worked at several movie theaters throughout Spokane to support his family while attending Eastern Washington University in the ‘50s. There he obtained his bachelor’s degree in English, with a minor in journalism. In 1960 he received his teaching certificate from Whitworth. In 1961 he moved his growing family to Sandpoint. As a teenager, he followed in his father’s footsteps and received his pilot’s license at the age of 16, and was in the Air Force Reserve for six years. For 29 years during the summers he loved his work as an aerial observer for the Forest Service. But the profession Bob was most proud of was teacher and coach, specifically adviser of the Sandpoint High School Cedar Post. During his nearly 30-year tenure at the high school, he taught thousands of Sandpoint students the fundamentals of English, photography, and news writing, as well as coached them in basketball, football and track. The Cedar Post was one of the few weekly high school papers published in the nation throughout his leadership, and he was proud of the many national and regional honors it received over the years. Bob’s talent, whether it was at a state girls’ basketball game, as his son’s little league coach, or advising the student paper, was to see potential in a student and draw that out. He was proud of his many former students, athletes, and Cedar Post staff members and their achievements, be it professional journalists or small business owners. He loved the outdoors, flying, building flowerbeds for his wife, landscaping on his Jewel Lake property and his woodpile. No one was more proud of his family than Bob, or as convinced that there was no one more attractive, intelligent or talented than his children or grandchildren. He is survived by his wife Ruth; four children, daughter Sue and her husband Dale Tucker of Sagle; daughter Margee and her husband Rex Timblin of Laclede; son Robert and his wife Liz Hamilton of Baltimore; and daughter Annie and her husband John Regan of Phoenix. Also six grandchildren; Erin, Carly, Jeffrey, Devin, Ryan and Brad; eight and a half great grandchildren; Lily, Chloe, Cyrus, Tyler, Emma, Maia, Jagger and Megan, and numerous nieces and nephews, as well as his sister Bonnie Ackerman in Spokane, and brother Bill Hamilton in Florida. There will be a private, family memorial on his property when the family re-gathers in the summer.