My Thoughts about Bobo

I was honored that the family of Steve “Bobo” Burns asked me to say some words at his memorial service yesterday.  He was an amazing guy, as I wrote earlier.  Below the jump is what I said about him.

Years ago, on a Colorado Ski Trip, Pete Larson was bragging about how he had never been pranked on April Fools Day.  Being that it was April 1^st, John Neal and Dave Dederichs decided to take on that challenge, and they snuck into the room that Pete shared with Bobo.  There they perpetrated the old prank in which a victim’s tooth brush is wrapped in saran wrap and placed in a particular bodily orifice, then a picture is taken with the victim’s camera, and then the pranksters wait for the victim to develop his film for the big reveal.  It wasn’t discovered for six months that it was, in fact, Bobo’s camera.  And Bobo’s tooth brush.

Bobo was notoriously on the wrong side of practical jokes.  Like the time that Paul and Nan Bertelson had to leave Camp Pyro for a day, leaving Bobo in charge.  As counselors, we decided that it would be pretty funny to dump a 30-gallon garbage can full of water on Bobo from the balcony of the girls’ dorm.  It wasn’t so funny when the water instead hit a pile of drywall, reducing it to mush, and Bobo got called into Gordy’s office to explain the disaster.

Or the time on the PF Fall Retreat, during my senior year of high school.  We were at Green Lake Bible Camp, and Bobo, being that he was vertically challenged, stood on a stump to describe the game we were about to play.  The always mischievous Kurt Eilers thought it would be a good idea to depants Bobo, which was not difficult since he usually wore gym shorts and he really had no waist.  The pants came down like a hot knife through butter.  As Bobo reached to pull them back up, he tripped and fell off the stump, blowing out his knee, and there he lay, grasping his knee, crying out in pain, his pants around his ankles.  And a few dozen high school kids knew the answer to the question, “Boxers or briefs?”

It was one of the few times that I saw Bobo angry.  And maybe that’s what memorable about it, because he was so rarely anything but happy.  In fact, the best prank I ever pulled on Bobo – and I pulled it repeatedly – was getting him to start laughing uncontrollably during something important, like while he was leading the Boogaloo.  Others would resort to tickling him, but not me.  It was much more of a challenge to drop a pun on him, or whisper something completely inappropriate in his ear, and then see if you could get him to go into the convulsing and silent hysteria that would paralyze him and send tears running down his cheeks.

It is said that every great preacher really only has one sermon, just delivered in many different ways.  Bobo was like that, except for the part about many different ways.

Most of us in this room heard his talk, the talk, and many of us heard it dozens of times.  It started with Bobo, as a child, trying to dig to China in his back yard.  It progressed to him smoking pot behind the trees that ringed the Southview tennis courts, and then to him in treatment, and eventually to him submitting his life to Jesus.  It was the story of his life, the one great story that he had to tell – the one great story that any of us has to tell.

In short, Bobo’s one great talk was The Gospel.  That’s it.  The Gospel.  Jesus saved Bobo.  And I thank God that I got to hear the Gospel from Bobo so many times.  I am a better Christian because of it.