Archbishop-Designate Jeffrey S. Grob with his parents after his first Mass at St. Francis Xavier Parish, Cross Plains, in June 1992. (Submitted photo)
We Catholics tend to feel that the best way to get to know a person is by becoming friends with their mom (case in point: the Blessed Virgin Mary).
So the people of southeastern Wisconsin will, no doubt, be anxious to meet Bonnie Grob, the mother of Archbishop-Designate Jeffrey S. Grob. More than just the woman who raised a future archbishop, Bonnie Grob is the person who, in the words of her son, keeps him “grounded” even today, as his life takes an unexpected turn toward the highest ecclesiastical office in Wisconsin.
“I really believe it helps to ground me, that kind of support,” said Bishop Grob. “It’s easy to become isolated. That’s a concern I have for my brother priests.”
The two have lived together since Bonnie Grob’s initial battle with breast cancer almost 20 years ago, spending the last decade at St. Celestine Parish in Elmwood Park, Illinois, where Bishop Grob formerly served as pastor. Shortly before Christmas, Bishop Grob and his mother took a break from packing up their belongings (and their beloved pet parrots) to speak with the Catholic Herald about their family, their hopes for the future and their upcoming move to Milwaukee.
Bonnie Grob has never doubted the priesthood was her son’s calling, but she certainly never expected him to go quite so far, as she said, “up the ladder.”
“I just wish his dad could have hung around longer and seen this all happen,” said Bonnie Grob, who lost Gerald, her husband of 34 years, in a plane crash in 1995. “But I’m sure he is watching from upstairs, and his grandparents and everybody else that has gone before us. They’d be all so proud. It’s quite a step.”
Especially for people who pride themselves on being “down-home folk,” in the words of Bishop Grob: “I always say, we’re from somewhere between the tavern and the farm.”
He means that literally. Bonnie Meinholz Grob grew up above her maternal grandparents’ tavern, Bollig’s Bar, in “the big metropolis” (the wink is audible in her voice as she says it) of Cross Plains (just west of Madison), and even today she has the quick wit and the vibrant stories of a small-town bartender. But it’s mixed with the open, easy warmth of a farmer’s wife, because in 1960, she wed Gerald Grob and moved onto his parents’ 320-acre farm in the township of Berry, where the family would raise their only child — along with a lot of Brown Swiss cattle.
The city girl might have felt out of place at first — “I could make a mean drink, but I had to learn about cows,” she said — but it didn’t take long for her to love the country life.
“I lived with my in-laws, and so many people say, ‘Oh my God, living with your in-laws!’ I couldn’t have had a better pair of people. They were just super, super people,” she said of Bishop Grob’s grandpa Tony and grandma Ann Grob. During the week, when he wasn’t in the classrooms of the School Sisters of St. Francis at St. Francis Xavier Grade School in Cross Plains, Bishop Grob played Mass on the front porch of the farmhouse using Necco wafers for hosts while his paternal grandparents obligingly formed the congregation. On the weekends, he would go to Cross Plains to spend time with his “Grandma Pae” Meinholz, who still ran the bar.
“He had the best of both worlds,” said Bonnie Grob.
Bonnie Grob continued to tend bar on the night shift at Bollig’s, but the farm life certainly influenced her. To this day, she is an accomplished baker, and her famous seven-layer “Hello Dolly” bars are beloved by many — including Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago. She makes sure to get a batch to His Eminence whenever her son is going to see him.
“I always try to make it a point that he gets some bars,” she said.
In the mid-1970s, when their only child expressed an interest in the priesthood and a desire to attend Holy Name High School Seminary in Madison, Bonnie and Gerald Grob were supportive — it was, said Bonnie, “his blood calling.” Meanwhile, they were keeping plenty busy themselves. When Gerald’s parents retired from farming, he decided to go into trucking — and decided his wife should, too.
“It was so comical,” said Bonnie Grob. “He just said, one day, ‘We’re going to try something different. We’re going to go trucking.’” The couple obtained their commercial driver’s licenses and purchased a brand-new Peterbilt refrigerated semi-tractor trailer. They spent the next two decades hauling cheese and dairy out of Wisconsin to the West Coast, coming back with what truckers call a “tossed salad” — lettuce, carrots, other vegetables and fruits.
“We had fun,” she said. “Truckers are the most beautiful people you ever want to meet. They are some good folks. There’s nobody they aren’t going to help out.”
Gerald Grob died in September 1995 in a plane crash on a fishing trip in Canada. Following that, the family sold the farm and Bonnie Grob moved to a condo in Madison. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, Bishop Grob, then judge of Chicago’s Archdiocesan Court of Appeals, suggested that she move in with him.
“For me, it was the most logical thing,” said Bishop Grob. “Losing Dad as suddenly and as tragically as that — I mean, it’s just Mom and I. We come from a small clan. It was just natural.”
Walking with his mother through her cancer journey (she has faced three recurrences of the disease), Bishop Grob said he has learned how essential it is “to have an advocate when you’re going for test results or appointments.”
“(As the patient), your mind is in a million different places, and so to have another person just to hear things, to ask questions, is important,” he said.
For her part, Bonnie Grob is grateful to have her son’s support — and a first-row seat to the living out of his vocation.
“People always say, ‘You know, your son is such a gentleman.’ And I say, ‘Well, maybe that’s the best part of God coming out in him,’” she said. “He’s just a good kid.”
“I pay her to say these things,” Bishop Grob interjected with a laugh.
But Bonnie Grob doesn’t gush about her son or his accomplishments — there is too much of the pragmatic farmer’s wife in her for that. She simply acknowledges that, perhaps, God had a plan all along for those porch Masses and Necco wafers.
“The thing about (Jeff) is, he does have a very gentle soul. And I think the way our world is going, boy, we need a lot of gentleness,” she said. “We need some hope and some light and some gentleness in this world, and I hope that is going to be his mission in Milwaukee.”
