In Loving Memory Of

Robert Alan Cogan.

I speak to you today as someone you may not know, a co-worker of Bob's at Wackenhut, to demonstrate how the life of this one man positively affected even those on the periphery of his existence, and to celebrate at the time of his passing the many powerful yet obscure ways, this good man made a difference.

Bob Cogan embodied in action the principle that loyalty is the highest law - loyalty to his country, his community, his family, and his friends. To his coworkers like myself he was the paragon of what a committed employee should be, honest, efficient and fair in his dealings with others. Imbued as a marine with the supreme values of courage, sacrifice, duty and service, he demonstrated daily their sterling worth as he applied them to life's routine challenges and to his personal battle with cancer. In keeping with the true nobility of his character, he bore the trials of that struggle stoically, not like the Pharisees of old would have done with all its details proclaimed. Until the time of his death he gave those of us whom he worked with no reason to believe that he would be anything but victorious in that struggle. And it is perhaps this type of response that defined the man best. That he served quietly and nobly, that the world otherwise preoccupied with its own dealings was left the better for it, and that the sun is now left to shine on the land he occupied because he and others like him had served and protected it. Godspeed Bob. We will miss you. (Garth J. Hallett)