By Emily Younker
eyounker@joplinglobe.com
CARTHAGE, Mo. — Bob Sheldon Jr. used to go frogging with his father when he was little.
He remembers watching his father wade through the water, waist-deep, while he followed after, barely keeping his chin above water.
After what they have called a tough year, the Sheldon family is focused on memories such as that in honor of their parents, Robert Sr. and Ellen Sheldon, who were found stabbed to death Oct. 11, 2008, at their home west of Carthage.
Family members, friends and regular customers of the Old Cabin Shop, the Sheldons’ business, gathered Sunday at the shop for a memorial in their honor hosted by their four children.
“(Hopefully people will) share some stories and tell us stories about what my dad and mom did for them,” said Bob Sheldon Jr., the oldest of the Sheldons’ children. “Obviously they had a big impact on a lot of people’s lives.”
Stan Pelham, a family friend for more than 20 years, said he didn’t have the words to describe what everyone has gone through since last October.
“It’s just a huge loss,” he said.
Pelham said Robert Sheldon Sr. could be grouchy at times, but he was always around to help. When Pelham’s son was assigned a paper in middle school about weapons during the Civil War, “Bob (Sr.) took that boy and talked to him for three hours,” he said.
Sheldon Sr. also piqued Pelham’s interest in the hunter safety course he taught at his shop; Pelham is now an instructor.
“He was just quite a guy,” Pelham said. “They were both good people, really good people.”
The past year has been “hell,” said Karen Wright, whose father was a cousin of Robert Sheldon Sr.
“You don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” Wright said. “You never know when a memory is going to sneak up on you. A smell can trigger a memory.”
Wright grew up close to the Sheldons. She recalled that Ellen Sheldon had always wanted to visit Hawaii, so when Wright and her husband vacationed in Hawaii in February, they took a picture of the Sheldons with them.
Wright said she hopes people will continue to pray for the Sheldon family.
“There’s a lot of healing (still needed),” she said. “It’s kind of hard to heal when that wound keeps getting opened.”
Bob Sheldon Jr. said that his parents’ murders one year ago “started off a whole cascade” of family tragedy.
Just one month after the Sheldons were killed, Robert Sheldon Sr.’s younger brother died of a heart attack. Their daughter Cara Housh’s husband died over the summer.
Larry Ogden, Ellen Sheldon’s younger brother, who had been living in the Sheldons’ house, was taken to Freeman Hospital on Sunday morning before the memorial, Sheldon said. He died later that afternoon.
Sheldon said he can still feel his parents around him. One day, for example, he went out to his parents’ cabin in Pineville, Mo., to mow. As he was mowing — avoiding the patches of brown-eyed susans, just as his mother would have wanted — a sudden gust of wind blew up some leaves, which began to swirl around the cabin in a whirlwind, Sheldon said.
He took that a sign of his parents’ approval for the way he and his siblings were keeping the shop going.
Sheldon said business at the Old Cabin Shop is going well. He and his siblings try to keep the shop open daily, and in the past year, they have added log siding to the building and mounted a memorial stone for their parents in front next to the door.
“We just knew we were going to do it (keep the shop open),” he said. “We knew we had to give it a good run.”
Sheldon said he has learned a lot over the past year about the business, which is a gun and archery shop. If he has a question, he now finds himself digging through reference books instead of asking his father, who was his go-to person.
“I automatically reach for the phone to give him a call,” Sheldon said. “A year later, I still do that.”
Daniel Sheldon, the youngest sibling, said he recently built the archery section up and expanded it slightly.
“There was a lot of hard work over the years (that went into the shop), and we want to keep it going,” he said.
The Sheldon family is also going strong. It now includes the Sheldons’ 20 grandchildren and one great-greatchild, the youngest of whom will never know the head of their family, Bob Sheldon Jr. said.
“Mom loved her grandkids,” he said. “She loved to babysit and teach the little ones.”
Sheldon said he and his siblings attend every court appearance by the two men accused of their parents’ murders. He has no sympathy for them.
“I didn’t really understand how well thought of my parents were until this happened,” Sheldon said. “Those two have no idea what they took away.”
