Robert Williams Alexander Mitchell

Robert, know to his family in childhood as Sandy, was always a bit of a ladies man..   Women seemed to just love him and flocked  to him almost anywhere in public.   I asked him about it once and he said it was because they instinctively knew that he loved them all.

In addition to being quite the drinker, he was an educated, well bred, and engaging financial manager.   

He was educated in Hawaii, returned to Canada and worked for a few financial management companies until he ended up working for RoyWest Trust in Nassau, Bahamas which is where he worked until he died. Over the course of his career with RoyWest Trust he became Vice President of Marketing for the Western Hemisphere.

Throughout his childhood and adult life he was a sun lover... never wearing suntan lotion and spending as many hours in the sun as he could..

For recreation he was a pilot and a sailer...  During his years in the Bahamas he would frequently sail from the Bahamas to mainland Florida.. all alone in his 26ft sailboat.

He was once asked if he wasn't concerned about making those trips alone and he quipped, "  I'm never worried.   I'm 6'.6" so I can be seen from anywhere when I am standing and if it is a foggy day people can just follow the trail of empty beer cans to find me."

He was also once asked by he drank so much and he said it was because he was so fearful of life generally that he wouldn't have been able to accomplish anything unless he drank.
It is probable that this was an inherited trait from his father, who although very successful, was a functioning alcoholic from the time he was 17 until the day he died..

Sadly at the age of 40 he was diagnosed with a melanoma on his back.   He was told by the Mayo Clinic at the time that if he was treated he could survive another 15 years, but not in particularly good comfort and he would end up bankrupt, but if he wasn't treated he would survive another 15 years  in reasonable comfort by just having the lesions, as they grew, removed.     He chose not to be treated and instead leave a fairly sizable estate..

He passed away at the age of 52, with his common law wife, Michelle at his side.

During his University years he fathered a daughter who was put up for adoption..    I don't know the reasons why that was done, but she became known to our family over the past few years and she is Stacy Kowlsen, of Jacksonville, Florida.

On Robert's passing he was cremated and his ashes were spread in the Ocean off of Paradise Island, Bahamas