In recent years Dr. Robert Kane, director of the University’s Center on Aging, has been working with UMRA’s Cares Committee and members interested in understanding the aging process and in improving long-term care. Bob taught and consulted and supervised the UMRA Care Guides, volunteers who were trained and available to help families and individuals who were confronted by health crises that demanded decisions.

Dr. Kane first spoke to the UMRA luncheon audience in April 2015 and therafter presided over several workshops on aging and long-term care. Thus began a partnership that was just beginning to flourish.

When he died suddenly on March 6, Dr. Kane left his UMRA partners, as well as so many other colleagues, stunned. What follows are words from a few of our Care Guides, UMRA members who had the privilege of working with and learning from him.  

“Bob Kane’s passing is a huge loss to UMRA. He was an inspiration to so many of us, giving us reason to empathize with our fellow retirees and ways to help them during the difficulties of later life. As a student in his “Care Guides seminars” last year, I found him to be brilliant, wise, and very knowledgeable. Despite his serious stroke of about five years ago, leaving him handicapped with difficulty in body motions, he never complained; he always listened attentively and in a quiet manner that showed great compassion for others.”  — Ron Anderson

“I enjoyed all of his training sessions and learned so much! His is a loss to the wide community—his research and knowledge, his compassion, and common sense.”
— Maggie Catambay

“Bob Kane clearly saw the difficult realities of aging and worked tirelessly to bring about needed changes to health care for all. His untimely death is a tremendous  loss for UMRA and the University.” 
— Earl Nolting

“A wise, compassionate, and patient mentor for UMRA Care Guides, the Re-think Tank, and for me personally! Truly, our hearts are heavy at this time.”
— Helen Carlson 

This is a loss that is deeply affecting his colleagues at the Center for Aging who knew him best of all. We thank Jeannine Ouelette, editor for Old News and co-author of The Good Caregiver, for the following remembrance, which was excerpted from Old News, the Center for Aging publication.

By now, most of you have received the sad news of the sudden death on March 6 of Dr. Robert Kane, world-renowned expert on aging and director of the University’s Center on Aging and of the Minnesota Evidence-based Practice Center. This staggering loss has sent shockwaves of grief worldwide.

For those who worked closely with Bob, the reality and scope of his absence have barely begun to feel real. On the Friday before he died, Bob was finalizing his last editorial column for the late March issue of Old News, the newsletter for the Center on Aging, outlining his ambitious vision to not just improve long-term care for older adults, but to completely rebuild it from the ground up. True to his rigorous form, he felt there was little sense in bandaging an inherently flawed product that no one rightfully wants.

Throughout his career, Bob championed tirelessly for the rights and wellbeing of older adults. His most recent endeavor, the Long-term Care Re-Think Tank, is making promising inroads toward that end (his obituary notice asked that donations be made to this organization, among other causes).

Bob’s monumental intellect was widely known; that he dedicated it to improving how we care for each other is so fundamentally compassionate that it will be remembered by all who knew him. Bob was an international expert, respected professor and researcher, and widely published author. A fierce and heartfelt advocate for his many students and colleagues, he supported their aspirations with unparalleled devotion. Bob’s high standards and charming toughness fostered the best in everyone around him.

“Bob had two core drives—active compassion and intellectual honesty,”said Mary Butler, assistant professor in the Division of Health Policy and Management and associate director of the EPC. As a close colleague, Butler observed that both these characteristics found a perfect home not only in his long-term care and aging work, but also wherever he found an opening. “He didn’t advertise his compassionate acts, so it’s easy to understand how someone may not have known,” Butler says, “but the number of current and former students and faculty and community members he mentored is staggering and matters more than the impressive number of articles or books he wrote.” He will be so dearly missed.