Robert F. Colquhoun, 90, passed away Sept. 13.
He was born in Glasgow, Scotland on Aug. 23, 1925, and was educated at St. Columkille’s School and Rutherglen Academy in his hometown of Rutherglen.
He immigrated to the U.S. with his mother in 1940, at the age of 15. He served in the U.S. Army in France during WWII, landing at Omaha Beach days after D-Day, and received a Purple Heart for injuries sustained in the Battle of St-Lô. He later returned to France in the Signal Corps and was stationed in Paris after Liberation, directing communications for northern France.
After the war, Bob became an American citizen at the U.S. Embassy in London in 1945. He graduated Seton Hall College and Fordham University Law School. He returned to Seton Hall as a law professor from 1953 to 1960, and founded his law practice in Bloomfield, N.J., in 1957, which he later moved to Morristown, N.J., where he practiced with four of his children until his death. In 2004 he was awarded the Morris County Bar Association Lifetime Achievement Award.
Proud of his Scottish heritage, Bob was a lifetime member and president of the Saint Andrew’s Society of the State of New York from 1987-1989. He was also a founding member of the St. Andrews Society of the State of Maine, and wrote that organization’s original charter. He was a 32nd degree Freemason, a member of Cincinnati Lodge #3 F. & A. M. in Morristown, N.J. and a member of the Knights of Columbus, Council 1178 in Bloomfield, N.J. He was a president of the Junior Essex Troop of Cavalry in West Orange, N.J., in which four of his children were cadets.
In the early 1960s, Bob bought the Piper home on Bristol Road, Damariscotta, which he established as The Down Easter Inn, and which he and May owned and operated, first with his parents, Bob and Elizabeth Colquhoun, then with cousins, Hugh and Beatrice Lang, and now with his daughters, from the late 1960s to the present.
Bob’s real passion was his family. He was a dedicated and devoted husband to the love of his life, his wife May, for 44 years until her death in 1995. He was the loving father of seven children, grandfather of 10, and great-grandfather of two, in whom he took great delight.
He loved singing and dining out and would often combine the two, should the restaurant have a piano player. He and May enjoyed travelling, and cherished the times they spent at their home in Florida and their beloved “farm” in Round Pond.
He is predeceased by his wife, May; and parents, Robert and Elizabeth Colquhoun.
He is survived by his children, Robert II and wife Barbara, Kevin and wife Colleen of Long Valley, N.J., Sean of Bedminster, N.J., Brian and wife Kathryn of Morris Township, N.J., Kathleen Colquhoun Halm of Edgecomb, and Moira and Elizabeth Colquhoun of New Vernon, N.J.; grandchildren, Erin, Kevin, Caitlin, Maureen, Robert, Katrina, Quinn and Devon Colquhoun and Benjamin and May Halm; and great-grandchildren, Paul Gundersdorf and Bryson Leach.
A mass of Christian burial was celebrated Sept. 18 at the Church of Christ the King, New Vernon, N.J.
