Robert “Bob” Hiatt
Robert “Bob” Hiatt
Minneapolis, MN
Robert “Bob” Hiatt, 83, decided to leave on 9/14/24, from Minneapolis, MN.
Born 12/6/40 on the Great Plains to Claude and Marion (Coombs) Hiatt, Bob was an adventurer in spirit. He grew up in Cedar Rapids, IA, and developed passions for the arts, music, politics, food and travel. He was a Peace Corps volunteer, lawyer and entrepreneur, husband and father, and had many close, lifelong friends.
Bob was an English major at Brown University in Rhode Island, completing his college career with mostly-passing grades and several good pals. He then volunteered for the Peace Corps and spent the next three (?) years in Panama. This led not only to fluency in Spanish, a plethora of fantastic stories and even más amigos, but to meeting the woman who would become his wife of 56 years, Dietrah Chapman.
Bob and Dee ended their Peace Corps stint and moved to her hometown of Washington, DC. After being famously late to their own wedding, they eventually settled close to the National Zoo and had two rotten kiddos. Bob trained volunteers in DC for VISTA before working for the Rural Housing Alliance, then moved to Pierre, SD in 1972 to join the SD Office of Economic Development. This led to his appointment as the first Executive Director of the SD Housing Development Authority.
In Pierre, he was active in local and state politics, with the Governor issuing an official proclamation declaring one wedding anniversary “Bob and Dee Day.” (In honor of their chronic tardiness, it was issued two days late.) During this time, he briefly had a business called Hiatt’s Flying Lobsters, which flew live Maine lobsters to Pierre, providing the only fresh seafood in town at the time.
After leaving the Housing Authority, Bob switched gears and got his law degree from the University of South Dakota. He opened a law office in Pierre, allowing him to wear his Panama hat and poncho to work, which had been declared unacceptable while working for the state. He later became the Crow Creek Reservation’s Tribal Prosecutor, completing crosswords while driving the hour-long route, and began trading commodities, an equally risky endeavor.
Dee took her turn switching gears in the 1990s, so they moved to Minneapolis so she could attend grad school. Bob embarked on a whirlwind of careers and hobbies, some more successful than others: realtor, bartender, long-distance phone service dealer, chad counter, non-profit administrator, eBay salesman, kickboxer, straw bale gardener. None was the right fit, until he discovered the perfect avocation: retiree.
Once retired, Bob was able to pursue his true passions, with Dee joining in on much of the fun: cooking, eating at local restaurants, carefully (and loudly) following national politics, reading, doing puzzles, listening to (and quizzing his children about) jazz and rock music, taking road trips to visit friends and collecting art.
Though he unfortunately left without realizing a few of his dreams-running a rattlesnake ranch, moving to Belize, creating a line of affordably-priced modular furniture, writing his memoir, raising capybaras, living to be 120 years old, and voting for Kamala Harris for President-Bob lived a long and full life.
Bob is survived by his beautiful, patient and loving wife, Dee, doting and dutiful children, Stephanie and Benjamin, and surly Shih-Tzu, Willie.
He was preceded in death by his parents, Claude and Marion, his sister and brother-in-law, Sheila and Lance Blakely, and his favorite and smartest child, Charlie the Shih-Tzu.