Mr. Roub was principal of my elementary, middle, and high school from the time I was six until the time I graduated. There may have been a year or two in there where he was on a well-deserved furlough and Mr. Nygren took over, but overall it was Mr. Roub.
He was a big man with a booming voice, strong presence, and a heart that embraced his staff and students. Mr. Roub was a leader in every sense of the word.
He was a man entrusted with the overall leadership of a small school in the foothills of the Himalayan mountain range in Pakistan. A man whose primary job was to serve the mission community by using his leadership skills in an educational setting. And he was a man who did his job with integrity and grace.
Through the years, our small school, primarily made up of missionary kids, experienced almost everything that a large high school in the United States would. Although home churches and mission agencies may have wanted to deny it, there were drugs, smoking, revolts and rebellions, staff/student tension, suicide attempts, deaths, eating disorders, and more. All these took place in a complicated context – a small, Christian sub-culture in the middle of a Muslim country. It took incredible wisdom and sometimes just pure grit and determination to work at the school and believe in its mission. Mr. Roub had all of that and more.
Because he was in our mission agency, I often called him Uncle Chuck. We were like extended family and the auntie and uncle labels were used all the time. In the absence of blood family, we didn’t need a Mister or a Missus. We needed something more and the auntie and uncle title put more responsibility onto us, and onto those given the title.
I grew up knowing Uncle Chuck as principal of our school and as friend to my dad. When my dad was deeply discouraged at one point in his work in Pakistan, Uncle Chuck took an overnight train that took 18 hours to visit him – just to encourage him. When my parents would come to Murree, they always visited, and often stayed, with the Roubs.
This became more complicated when I reached my teen years and I had all sorts of reasons to spend time in the Principal’s office. I remember showing up at his house one night with a guilty conscience, confessing that I had smoked cigarettes. Smoking was absolutely forbidden, as it is in most high schools, and I had bought K-2 cigarettes and had a go with them on the grounds outside of the school. K-2 cigarettes were named after the famous K-2 mountain and boasted a pristine picture of the mountain on the outside, with unfiltered ghastly cigarettes on the inside.
My conscience was strong, and I found myself in the Roub’s living room making up a story about “a friend who I knew was smoking.What on earth should I do?” Being a man of wisdom, he asked the right questions and quickly knew that “the friend” was me. He gave me a punishment, but he did more. He absolved me, like a priest would, prayed with and for me, and sent me on my way. I never smoked again, more importantly – this was the last time I was ever in the “principal’s office.”
To my knowledge, he never allowed my bad behavior to affect his relationship with my parents, nor his overall view of me.
Uncle Chuck was also my American History teacher during my senior year of high school. I should probably not admit that, because my understanding and knowledge of American History is appalling. I simply saw no need to learn it, but I do remember that it was an incredibly fun class.
A year after I graduated from high school I saw Uncle Chuck in Wheaton, Illinois at a gathering of missionary kids. He wanted to know how I was, how nursing school was going for me. I asked him about the school, a place I had ached for every day since I left. “You know,” he said “the last couple of years, including your year, were years of great spiritual growth and impact. Staff and students are getting along better than they ever have. Morale is high. It was a good year.” He smiled and his eyes were misty as he talked.
That brief conversation invited me to see the school not as a student, but through his eyes, the man at the helm. I was given the gift of perspective and saw what the most important thing was for this man. He longed to see hearts change and grow; more than anything he longed for students and staff to love God. That’s what he prayed for, that’s what he lived for. The magnitude of this hit me in a way it couldn’t have when I was a student.
Chuck Roub died on New Year’s Day. The posted announcement was followed by many comments speaking to the man that he was, thanking him for his life, for his faithfulness, for his example of grace, and for his leadership.
As one commenter said, Uncle Chuck was a “Giant of a man.” His family will grieve their loss, even as they know he is finally home.
As for Uncle Chuck, he has fought the good fight, he has finished the race, he has kept the faith.* Is there anything better?
*Paraphrased from 2 Timothy 4:7 NIV
