Robert (Hawk) Haukap was born in Templeton, Iowa on February 4th, 1939, the middle child of Lawrence C. Haukap of Germantown, IL, and Frances B. Sturm of Templeton. When still in his toddler pants, his parents moved the family – Bob, older sister Elizabeth (Betty), and baby brother Larry – to Kansas City, MO for Lawrence’s employment at North American Aviation, supporting the production of B-25 bombers during the war period.
In 1950 the family returned to Iowa, to south of Breda where Bob finished 6th grade at St. Bernard’s Catholic School. Later that year, the family moved to Carroll where Bob attended middle school at St. Peter & Paul Catholic Grade School. He next completed his freshman year of high school at Carroll Public High School, then transferred to Kuemper Catholic High School to resume his duties as a dedicated student and altar boy, the latter of which he took quite seriously.
He was a good-not-stellar student (his words) in high school with an interest in many extracurricular activities. These included of course his altar boy responsibilities, playing baseball and running track (lettering in both!), and singing in the school chorus and boys’ quartet. Outside of school, he always kept busy with part-time jobs including delivering newspapers, pin-setting at the bowling alley, and bussing tables at the Brown Derby restaurant. He and his cadre of like-minded pals from school could often be found engaging in plenty of south-side-of-town mischief and entry-level troublemaking, mostly of the inconsequential sort. Mostly.
Bob graduated from Kuemper in 1957 as a member of the school’s very first graduating class. He spent the following few years working in Carroll, including stockroom duties and a vending machine route with the Farner-Bocken Company, where his sister Betty was employed and had put in a good word for him. In January of 1960, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, and following basic training in Fort Riley, Kansas, he was enrolled in the Army’s engineering school at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, and was then dispatched to Ft. Bliss, Texas with the 815th Engineering Battalion. His overseas engineering and surveying assignments included Greenland, Nova Scotia, and after completing his 3-year enlistment he was discharged as a Specialist 5th Class. The Army’s engineering school and duties were a great fit for his interests in problem solving and measuring things, and it had the added benefit of instilling upon him excellent penmanship, which his friends and family always admired and appreciated.
Heeding the call of the Midwest, Bob returned from a short stay in California to Iowa in early 1963 to resume his employment at the Farner-Bocken Company, where for the next 7 years he managed a vending machine route covering the greater Carroll County area. It was in the course of conducting the important business of keeping the vicinity’s Lucky Strike and Snickers dispensing machines faithfully stocked that a brown-eyed and dark-haired young lady working at the Vail drive-in cafe first caught his attention. It was March of 1965, and after a brief period of encouragement from the girl’s mother (along with some less-than-subtle prodding from the otherwise quite-shy girl herself), dating and soon a courtship ensued. The girl revealing to him that, yes, she knew how to make good fried chicken was a primary motivator in this development.
Bob and Janean Nelson were married (on their shared birthday!) on February 4, 1966. They made their home in Carroll, and in the seven years that followed they had 3 sons. (No amount of wishing and hoping and praying was enough to bring Janean a daughter.) In October of 1972, Bob went to work at the brand new General Electric manufacturing plant in Carroll, where he advanced his employment from stock keeper to styling technician to production planner and eventually production supervisor. He retired from GE in 1998 when the plant was closed and he was literally one of the last employees out the door.
A few of Bob’s long-time interests included bowling, coin collecting, and golf. His participation in the latter came to an unceremonious end following his refusal to ride in a cart for the Senior League at the Municipal Golf Course; to him golf was meant to be walked. Bob and Jeanie were both very active in the bowling scene in the Carroll area for many years, and he was still participating in league bowling in Carroll until his final months. Like in most other aspects of his life, he was methodical and disciplined about his bowling. He eventually rolled his first 300 game in October of 1987, his first 800 series in November of 2000, and his second perfect game in October of 2001. He nearly matched this achievement when he bowled a 299 (and 744 series!) in the Carroll City Tournament team event in 2020, two days before his 82nd birthday. Among his greatest prides were when he and his middle son competed in the national youth family doubles bowling tournament in Washington DC in 1987, and his youngest son also bowling a perfect game in 2001. Within the family it’s been suspected that he was less enthused with his oldest son who never showed any interest in bowling whatsoever, but that’s not the sort of thing he would ever admit to. In recent years he had also appointed himself as the Official Unofficial Scorekeeper for the Carroll Merchants home games, and he took great care to dutifully log their home games in his scorebooks, where the data would be filed and collated into his briefcase, where it would then never be seen again.
Bob is survived by his wife of 59 years Janean; his children and their families: son Nelson (Dana); son Carter (Lara); and son Wyatt (Lindsay) all of Carroll; sister Elizabeth (John) Tharnish, and brother Larry Haukap, both of Carroll; 7 grandchildren: Eden (Trevor) Koolmees, Maya Haukap, Truman Haukap, Daisy Haukap, Oscar Haukap, Everett Haukap, and Rye Haukap; great-grandson Sawyer Koolmees, and with great-grand-baby #2 due soon. Bob was preceded in death by his parents Lawrence and Frances Haukap.
The family will hold an informal get together for all family and friends wishing to attend at the Carroll Moose Lodge on Saturday, March 22 from 1-4 pm. Any cash gifts will be donated to the youth bowling league at Starline Lanes in Carroll to help encourage and support the next generation of young bowlers, both methodical and otherwise. Let’s have one last Old Milwaukee Light on Hawk.
Funeral arrangements are under the direction of the Dahn and Woodhouse Funeral Home in Carroll and online condolences may be left for the family at www.dahnandwoodhouse.com
