Robert Lominska Obituary

Robert H. (Bob) Lominska, died in his home on Tuesday, September 24th, of late complications of a stroke. Bob had been disabled since 2015 when he suffered a brain infarct which cost him most of his ability to speak and the use of the right side of his body. Despite these deficits, and with the constant care and support of his wife Joy, he was able to remain in his home on the farm until the end, according to his wishes.

Bob was born in Sayville, Long Island, the 2nd of 4 children to Clemense (Clem) Augustus Lominska, and Jean (Grammie) Ketcham. Clem was the son of Polish immigrants, educated as a lawyer, who worked at Dutch Boy paint company during the great depression. Grammie, educated at Mount Holyoke, came from a family of physicians and engineers and taught kindergarten.

Bob grew up in a house full of friends who flowed in and out with the Great South Bay for a playground. The house was filled with books and music, from Grammie's love for musicals and choir, to Bob's high school folk trio "The Bimini Three." When money ran low for food at the end of the month, the family would subsist on scallops harvested from the bay. Bob suffered the loss of his own father when he was 15. Clem, an active outdoorsman, died of a heart attack after breaking up a dog fight.

For college, Bob made the novel decision to leave the East Coast for the Midwest. His brother-in-law, Graham, told him that the University of Kansas was cheap and had attractive co-eds. Accordingly, he enrolled, first to study anthropology, later switching to elementary education. In his junior year social psychology class, he met Joy Fellows, who had come to KU from Ohio for their Spanish program. They grew closer as they socialized through a circle of mutual friends. She learned French to write him flirtatious notes. He baked her homemade bread.

As their relationship solidified and he returned from a trip around the world with his family, the specter of the Vietnam war loomed. Morally opposed to US imperialism, Bob chose to enter the Peace Corps when his draft lottery number came up. He and Joy married and were posted to rural Nicaragua. Their two years in Nancimi, Nicaragua, teaching land conservation, agriculture, and women's health, proved foundational to their life. They returned to Kansas as the war ended to recover from the maladies of the rural tropics and build a life off the land.

They bought 40 acres attached to a 19th century farmhouse in southern Jefferson County and began to build their dream homestead. This process is memorialized in Joy's book, The Old Home Place. As they heated with a wood stove and hung laundry to dry on the clothesline, they turned an infertile plot of clay and stones into functioning farmland. This project, which they named Hoyland Farm, now has a 50-year history growing organic produce for family, friends, restaurants, and local farmer's markets. Bob and Joy also co-founded the first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in Kansas-the Rolling Prairie Farmers' Alliance. Bob and Joy were also educators and elementary school teachers.

Bob taught kindergarten at Woodlawn and Hillcrest elementary schools for nearly 30 years. Hundreds of Lawrence school children were shaped by his teaching as they passed through his classroom. This space was a messy, joyful slice of his own life, filled with plants, animals, and books–from baby chicks he hatched with an incubator to a milo sensory table from the feed store. Kids responded to his direct and uncondescending teaching style, and most of all to the music he filled his classroom with, singing and playing guitar.

Bob and Joy carried on the legacy of his open house growing up. They have two biological children, Chris and Avery, and adopted a third, Ashton CallsHim. Bob's parenting style reflected his own exuberant openness to life, as his kids followed him around picking weeds, playing in the dirt, swimming in the pond, and exploring nature. After school drives home were soundtracked by the radio playing, windows down in the un-airconditioned pickup truck, and frequent stops to pick up leaf bags off neighborhood yards to mulch the garden with.

Bob and Joy supported immigrant students and workers via the Overground Railroad and their network of friends from Latin America. Bob maintained close ties with his mother, who moved to Lawrence, as well as his brother and sisters, David, Betsy and Susan. Extended family, with nieces and nephews, Derek and Ben, and Anna and Julia, were hosted on the farm over the summers.