Robert Forrest Garren

Robert Forrest Garren was born to Forrest Bernard Garren and Bonnie Annette Scruggs Garren on April 5, 1943. In his later years, when asked to think of something pleasant to lower his blood pressure, he would think about the house in the “holler” in Asheville, N.C., where he grew up with two older sisters, Dian and Judy. He would imagine the stream running through the property and the spot where he would sail his boats where the water pooled beneath the mulberry trees and where his father kept watermelon to cool in the summer.

His interest in art came early and lasted a lifetime. His father worked for Southern Railway, and as a teenager, Bob used his railway passes to make day trips to Washington, D.C., to go to the National Gallery. His last art museum visit was in May when he went to the Art Institute in Chicago to once again see some of his favorite paintings.

He graduated from Mt. Pisgah Academy in 1962 and left the South to attend Atlantic Union College in South Lancaster, Mass., where he majored in art education.

Between college and graduate school he married Ruth Elizabeth Morgan who proved to be his ideal partner for nearly 60 years.

In 1968, Bob graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology with a master of fine arts in ceramics and moved to Collegedale, Tenn., to teach at Southern Adventist University. He taught there for 29 school years and rose to become chairman of the department. He started the Thanksgiving trip to New York to acquaint his students with the best of the art world, a trip he led 25 times. He also accompanied many groups of students to Europe with the college orchestra and the History Department.

He was an early member of the Next Door Gallery Group, a group of Chattanooga artists who ran a cooperative gallery next door to the Hunter Museum.

In 1994, toward the end of his teaching career, Bob took a life-changing trip to St. Petersburg, Russia, where he met artists who had stockpiled artwork with no means to sell or export their art. He decided to go back during the summer break, buy some artwork and bring it back and see if he could sell it. He sold everything fairly quickly, and then began making several trips a year during the school vacations. Eventually he decided to make the art business his new career and started the Robert Garren Gallery. It combined his love of art, travel, and people, and he continued making frequent trips to Russia until May of 2010.

Bob was the consummate Southern gentleman, always the last to go through a door or a buffet line. The Russian artists taught him the words PÓS-leh tee-BYÁ (after you) because he said it so often.

Bob adored his family. He was a wonderful father and husband and the grandpa (Baba) any child would love. For three years before he died, Bob was on dialysis — first at a clinic, and then at home when Ruth became trained in the process. When dialysis became discouraging, as it often did, he gave his reasons for continuing, and it was always about the grandkids; he wanted to see how they’d do in life. He is mourned by Garren and Gaines Miller and Kate and Forrest Garren, all of whom have a love of art he helped instill in them.

As Father’s Day approached, the children, Julie (Mathew) Miller and Rob (Kelly) Garren, comforted each other by noting “We had the best dad, and we were lucky to have had him for such a long time.”

He is predeceased by his parents and his sister Judy.

Bob didn’t want a fuss made over his death. He also wanted it to be as inexpensive as possible, so the family decided to celebrate his amazing life in private.