The Passing of Bob and Betty Markert

To the members and friends of Monumental Rifle and Pistol Club:

It is with great sorrow that I must report the sudden passing of Robert “Bob” Markert on Wednesday December 11, 2019. A sadder note, Bob’s wife Betty, also passed away on Friday December 13, 2019.

Bob was a devoted club officer of Monumental Rifle and Pistol club in excess of 25 years. He was our Executive Officer for many years and ran our club matches. Bob was a former Olympian in Smallbore Rifle and a member of the U.S Smallbore Olympic team in 1980. He was a friend to everyone that knew him. Bob will be greatly missed!

Currently we have no information concerning funeral arrangements. We will pass along any information as soon as we are informed.
Please keep Betty and Bob in your prayers!

Michael Bruzdzinski
President
Monumental Rifle and Pistol Club

Unbelievable.

RIP. Wow truly sorry to hear.

Sorry for your loss. It's sad to part with good people. RIP.

WOW!! Unbelievable!!

RIP. Prayers to family and friends. fred55

WOW! Hasn't been that long since I saw Bob at the range. Never knew anything was wrong. Sad news indeed!

Bob was at my shop a few weeks ago. This is horrible.....

RIP
Prayers for both, and to the family.

I did not know them but may they RIP together as it seems they did not want to be apart from each other here on earth.

We knew Bob and Betty. Bob taught my wife and me to shoot so well that on a good day for us and a bad day for him (like missing 1X and 'just' getting a 10) we beat him a few times each over a decade+. This year my average group size was just behind his and he asked twice what ammunition I was using. This was his quiet way of providing praise. I'd expected another try next year until received Mike's e-mail on 12/14/2019. For those that did not know him and those that did he was a private person and I'm going to provide one story so you that did not know him will understand.

After shooting at the AGC with MRPC for perhaps three years Bob invited us over to meet his wife. I mentioned this to Tom Emerson who we'd become friends with. His response to us was "He must really like you two. I knew him ten years before I even knew he had a wife." That was Bob.

As I posted in the other thread, I first met him when Freestate was a young and new range. He helped me with an issue with a firearm. He did not charge me. I offered, he would not take a nickel. There are some small events in life you will never forget, this was one of them. Fast forward however many years to this spring and summer. I was working the youth shoots at BCGF and there was an older really tall guy named Bob. I thought he looked really familiar, then I heard someone call him Dr Bob. It clicked. I became friends with him over the summer at the shoots. I never had the pleasure of meeting his wife, but I am sure she was a lovely lady.
RIP to both of you.

Please post any arrangements once/if you hear of them.

May both of them rest in peace , and know they made a difference .

In terms of arrangements, the latest I know of is that both will be cremated. I have no other information about a memorial service.

Dr. Bob (a doctor of Gunology) was a phenomenal shot. He qualified for the Olympics, as luck would have it, when America did not go to the Olympics. I'm not sure if I am sharing the write up on facebook correctly. If not, hopefully someone can fix it:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2233439203615328&set=a.1410003649292225&type=3&theater

As the Executive Officer of Monument Rifle and Pistol Club, Bob ran (and dominated) all of the club shoots. If you placed second behind Bob, pretty much everyone agreed that counted as a win. Bob not coming in first was such a rare occasion that a run of hats were made saying, "I Beat Bob," for those who managed to do that.

Somehow, I came into possession of one. It doesn't quite feel right to say that I won it, however I did practice for that match more than any other before or after. It was the very first club match I participated in. Ten shots with .22 at a golf ball at 100yds, hit or miss, shoot it wherever it lands. I probably went to the range half a dozen times or more in the month leading up to the match, hammering away with my Savage MKII with the basic scope that came with it from Dick's (back when they were cool). To this day, I'm sure more rounds have been through that barrel preparing for that match than all other events combined. It seemed to like the Winchester M22 ammo, and I got to where I could pretty well shoot out the golfball sized bullseye of a target, with maybe 1 in 20 flyers just outside. I say all of this, still, to convince myself that I did, in some way, earn the hat, and that it wasn't pure luck...

But it was mostly luck. I hit all 10 shots. Somehow, and this is really kind of inexplicable, somehow, Bob missed one Honestly, I was too new in the club to really appreciate what that meant, but everybody else got really excited and kept talking about this hat I thought it was kind of a nice gesture to let the new guy win his first match.

At the end of year meeting, when Bob announced all the winners of all the year's matches, there was a gold medal that he didn't put around his own neck (there were already plenty). He hung it around mine. By then, I had learned the magnitude of it, and accepted that it would probably never happen again

We used to have an M1 Carbine match. I can't remember if it was all standing, or maybe some kneeling/sitting, but it was at 100yds. One year, to be fair to the rest of us, Bob used a Ruger Blackhawk chambered in .30 Carbine. He probably still won

I don't know if he ever shared all of his deepest Gunology secrets that kept him on top, but Bob was eager to give pointers to shooters of any ability. We didn't see him as regularly as many people did, but we always felt regarded as friends.



What a loss, for all of us.

Art3 said:

Dr. Bob (a doctor of Gunology) was a phenomenal shot. He qualified for the Olympics, as luck would have it, when America did not go to the Olympics. I'm not sure if I am sharing the write up on facebook correctly. If not, hopefully someone can fix it:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2233439203615328&set=a.1410003649292225&type=3&theater

As the Executive Officer of Monument Rifle and Pistol Club, Bob ran (and dominated) all of the club shoots. If you placed second behind Bob, pretty much everyone agreed that counted as a win. Bob not coming in first was such a rare occasion that a run of hats were made saying, "I Beat Bob," for those who managed to do that.

Somehow, I came into possession of one. It doesn't quite feel right to say that I won it, however I did practice for that match more than any other before or after. It was the very first club match I participated in. Ten shots with .22 at a golf ball at 100yds, hit or miss, shoot it wherever it lands. I probably went to the range half a dozen times or more in the month leading up to the match, hammering away with my Savage MKII with the basic scope that came with it from Dick's (back when they were cool). To this day, I'm sure more rounds have been through that barrel preparing for that match than all other events combined. It seemed to like the Winchester M22 ammo, and I got to where I could pretty well shoot out the golfball sized bullseye of a target, with maybe 1 in 20 flyers just outside. I say all of this, still, to convince myself that I did, in some way, earn the hat, and that it wasn't pure luck...

But it was mostly luck. I hit all 10 shots. Somehow, and this is really kind of inexplicable, somehow, Bob missed one Honestly, I was too new in the club to really appreciate what that meant, but everybody else got really excited and kept talking about this hat I thought it was kind of a nice gesture to let the new guy win his first match.

At the end of year meeting, when Bob announced all the winners of all the year's matches, there was a gold medal that he didn't put around his own neck (there were already plenty). He hung it around mine. By then, I had learned the magnitude of it, and accepted that it would probably never happen again

We used to have an M1 Carbine match. I can't remember if it was all standing, or maybe some kneeling/sitting, but it was at 100yds. One year, to be fair to the rest of us, Bob used a Ruger Blackhawk chambered in .30 Carbine. He probably still won

I don't know if he ever shared all of his deepest Gunology secrets that kept him on top, but Bob was eager to give pointers to shooters of any ability. We didn't see him as regularly as many people did, but we always felt regarded as friends.

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What a loss, for all of us.

Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing that story.

I am posting this on behalf of one of Bob's oldest friends:

In memory of a good man and amazing marksman………………………………….

Monumental Rifle & Pistol Club has the proud distinction of having produced two Olympians. Art Cook who won the gold medal for small-bore rifle in 1948 and Bob Markert who was a member of the 1980 U.S. Smallbore Rifle Team that never got to compete. The Olympics venue that year was Moscow and President Jimmy Carter decided to pick up his peanuts and refused to play because the Soviets, (Russians), had just invaded a country named Afghanistan. With the stroke of a pen, he dashed the hopes of Olympic competition for hundreds of young Americans, among them, Bob Markert.

Anyone who ever attended a Monumental Club monthly meeting in the last two decades would easily recognize Bob. He was the big guy sitting on the far right of the head table announcing the winners and their scores of hundreds on Monumental Club matches. He was the Club’s Executive Officer entrusted to run and score all of Monumental’s varied shooting competitions.

Some may have found it odd that the winner in so many contests, the last name he read in nearly every competition, was his own. (Trap excluded). The fact was that he was an exceptionally gifted shot with any rifle or pistol put in his hands, and he was often modest about it!

Bob was a Registered Nurse with advanced clinical care credentials in intensive care and cardiac intensive care to name but a few. He held a MBA and turned his knowledge and instincts into a successful career as a day trader. Did I mention that he was a very smart man, indeed?

He hand loaded his own ammunition. In addition to bullet weight and powder type, he loaded the same calibers taking temperature, humidity, wind conditions and distance into consideration. Seriously, very few people ever knew that. We competed every year for a decade or more with Mark Martin and Jeff Andrews in the Club’s Snubby Pistol Match. I had as firm a hold on third place as Jeff or Mark did on second. Bob and I shot the same Smith & Wesson Model 19 in those matches and while I was seeking out the very best commercial competition grade ammunition, Bob just shot his “home brew”.

When Jeff was at Camp Perry and Mark was having a bad day, I could sneak into second place, but Bob was still beating me in the X count; it drove me crazy. Then one match day I arrived at the pistol range and asked Bob if he had a spare box of .38 Special because I had walked out of my house without any ammunition. (I lied). “Sure”, said Bob and handed me the box of ammunition I used to beat him for the first time since I’d met him. From then on I only used “.38 Special Markert” to shoot that match. Bob relished the competition of shooting against his own ammunition!

Only a handful of Club members could boast of having beat Bob in a Club match. So we had hats monogramed with “I BEAT BOB”. (Mark Martin’s idea.) We eagerly distributed them and all wore them at the next Club meeting, Bob LOVED it.

“Bob” stories could probably fill a book, but in the end, the Bob Markert I knew so well and who all of us loved was a generous and gentle man. I never heard him speak ill of another soul. He was always ready to share his immense knowledge of rifles and handguns. Anyone who ever shot against him became a better shot as a result of it. We were competing with an Olympian! No matter how full your schedule, you MADE time to practice to compete against Bob Markert. He was a friend to everyone who ever met him; and if you were going through an especially rough patch, he was the friend who would patiently listen and nod his head.

None of his friends will ever forget him because we know we are unlikely to ever encounter anyone like him again.

Tim von Eiff
Former President, MRPC