Robert (Bob) Bonitz, a long-time Guilford resident, passed away peacefully on Sept. 19 at age 79 from complications from Type I diabetes.
Bob was born in the Bronx, New York, on Nov. 2, 1938, and entered Stevens Institute of Technology at the age of 16, where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering and was a member of Theta Xi fraternity. In 1958, Bob married Karen Thompson who he met when they were seventeen and told her he wanted to marry on their first date. He joined Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET) upon his college graduation, relocating his young family to Connecticut to work for SNET. After first living in Bridgeport and Shelton, the family settled in Guilford in 1968.
In the 1980’s, Bob fulfilled a life-long dream of following in his father’s footsteps by running his own business and acquired Craft Contracting, a sheet metal business in West Haven. When his eyesight failed him four years later, he was forced to sell the business. He then used his master’s degree in psychotherapy to become a clinical director at Highland Heights home for children in New Haven until his retirement.
Bob was a long-time volunteer with the Guilford Interfaith Volunteers Friendly Visiting program, making many friends with Guilford residents who were homebound over the years. A man of many interests and talents, Bob was an avid sailor of Rhodes 19 and J/24s and a member of the New Haven Yacht Club. He also loved fishing for pickerel and bass in the waters of Lake Quonnipaug and the East River in his lovingly restored Old Town canoe. An accomplished painter and woodworker, he collected O-gauge trains, expanding upon an original set he owned since childhood to build a large-scale model railroad layout that delighted generations of his family. Late in life he became a fiction writer. He published several books under the pseudonym RC Bonitz and was an active member of the New England chapter of the Romance Writers of America before retiring from writing last year.
Bob deeply loved his family and is survived by his wife of sixty years, Karen; his son Robert (Joy); daughters Nancy Bowley (Mike), Susan (Tim Covello), Lisa Harris (John), and Amy (Addison Palmer); and grandchildren Chris Bowley (Melissa), Kevin Bowley (Melissa Gervais), Zoe and Olivia Covello, Sean and Rachel Harris, Lindsey, Hannah, and Thomas Bonitz, and Max and Ella Palmer. He also leaves great-grandchildren Conrad and Hudson Bowley, sister Ruth Vago (John), sister-in-law Gay Adams, and nieces. He was predeceased by his granddaughter Katherine Harris.
A celebration of his life will be held in October. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made in his name to the Four Diamonds at Penn State Children’s Hospital, a charity fighting childhood cancer, at 1249 Cocoa Ave., Ste. 115, PO Box 852, Hershey, PA 17033. Arrangements in the care of the Guilford Funeral Home, 115 Church St., Guilford. To share a memory or leave a message of condolence for the family, please visit www.guilfordfuneralhome.com.
