Auld Lang Syne to old friends
Robert Cliff at the Polar Bear Plunge on New Year’s Day 2012.
KERRI THORESON file photo
Bon vivant. According to Merrium -Webster, it’s a noun meaning a sociable person who has cultivated and refined tastes especially with regard to food and drink ... think International Man of Mystery. As I start to write the words, “my friend Robert Cliff” I realized that many hundreds, perhaps thousands of people from all walks of life would consider him as such. Finding a single word or phrase to describe Robert is impossible, like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. He was educated, articulate, irreverent and funny as all get-out.
I met Robert not too many years after he and his wife, Susan, moved to Coeur d’Alene in 2004. They owned the “Taylor House,” a beautiful 1905 Tudor on East Lakeshore Drive on Sanders Beach. Robert was bigger than life, handsome and always impeccably turned out. While his collection of monogrammed everyday dress shirts was impressive, I’m not sure he owned a single pair of socks. His best feature was his smile, perhaps because it was displayed often and paired with a mischievous twinkle of the eye.
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