Robert Earle Minnear

Robert Earle Minnear died peacefully at home on February 1, 2018. He passed away shortly before he was due to give a lecture on Ron Chernow’s biography of Ulysses S. Grant to his fellow members of the Lenbrook Retirement Community. It was probably the only time in his life that he was late for anything.

Bob was a gentle, decent, hard-working man and a man of many accomplishments over his long life. He was born on the eve of the Great Depression, October 15, 1929, and grew up on a small farm along the Ohio/West Virginia border. His family originally consisted of his father Cloyd Finley Minnear, who passed away when Bob was 12, his mother Mary Bertha Dyke, and older brother Les. Bob graduated Belpre High School at age 16. He and his brother Les were the first in their family to attend college. Bob graduated from the Ohio State University with a degree in Accounting and became a lifelong fan of the Buckeyes.

After college, Bob sat for the CPA exam and attained a higher score than anyone in the state of Ohio had ever received before. He was promptly hired by an accounting firm in New York City. He worked in New York until the Korean War when he served as an accountant for the U.S. Army at Fort Knox. After the war, Bob was hired by the accounting firm of Touche Niven, later known as Touche Ross, then Deloitte & Touche, and now Deloitte. As fate would have it, in 1958, the firm asked him to help open its Atlanta office, where he would work for 33 years and also where he would meet and marry another auditor, then named Loretto Boswell. Bob rose to Partner-in-Charge of the Atlanta Touche/Deloitte office and, working with many dear and esteemed colleagues, grew the office from five to five hundred people. In later years, he helped develop Deloitte’s practice in Japan, learning Japanese to do so. He also served as president of the Georgia Society of Certified Public Accountants.

Part of a large group of business and political leaders who led Atlanta’s rapid development into an international city in the second half of the 20th century, Bob was actively involved in his community. He was president of the Atlanta Kiwanis Club and was on the board of directors of Junior Achievement, Hillside Hospital, the Alliance Theater, the Atlanta Ballet, and the Capital City Club. Bob also worked on the “Save the Fox” campaign to preserve Atlanta’s historic Fox Theater and then served as the CFO of Atlanta Landmarks. The Fox later held a banquet for Bob to honor his work and his great passion for the fine arts. Bob truly loved classical music, especially opera, making the last of many trips to the New York Metropolitan Opera for his birthday last October.

Bob never stopped working and learning. After retiring from Deloitte, he obtained an MBA from Kennesaw State University and then began teaching Accounting there. From 1994 to 2008, Bob served as a Senior Lecturer at Emory’s Goizueta Business School, and his renown as an audit expert was such that he once appeared on the CBS Evening News to discuss the Enron scandal in front of a national audience. A voracious reader and avid student of history, Bob took yearly trips late in life to the University of Oxford to study European history.

Bob is survived by his four children Loretto Gertrude (“Trudy”) Smith, Mary Michael (“Molly”) Minnear, Robert Earle (“Bobby”) Minnear, Jr., and Norman Ernest Boswell (“Jack”) Minnear; his nine living grandchildren Rhett King, Sarah Minnear, Marimikael Seibert, Madeleine Seibert, Megan Minnear, Shane Smith, Rory Smith, Ian Minnear, and Frances Minnear; his niece Suzanne Hammond Minnear; his nephew Mike Minnear; and, his former wife and beloved friend of 58 years Loretto Boswell Sognier.

A graveside funeral service will be held at 10:00am on Tuesday, February 6, at Arlington Memorial Park in Sandy Springs. A memorial service will also be held at Lenbrook on Wednesday, February 7 at 11am, reception to follow.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, 1280 Peachtree Road, Suite 4074, Atlanta, GA 30309 Attention: Toni Paz or to the Business Fund For Excellence at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, www.goizeta.emory.edu, 1300 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30306.