Robert “Bob” McGonagle has been a resident at Morning Pointe of Lexington-East Senior Living, Kentucky, but his life story echoes the Biblical tale of the prodigal son. He has lived all over the country, including out of his car, and worked all kinds of jobs, finally culminating in ministry to the poor and homeless.
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A Rough Start
Born in 1954 in East Columbus, Ohio, Bob was the oldest of five children. He grew up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood, and his father died when Bob was 10 of malaria acquired in World War II. His mother married a grocer.
While he was still young, he and his brother moved down to the cellar, right across from an icebox full of beer. He started drinking and using drugs, which eventually got him kicked out of the house.
After leaving Catholic school in the mid-1960s, Bob went to public school. He took all the shop classes he could and participated in sports, including bowling and golfing.
“I didn’t have any mentorship,” Bob shared. “I just started working. If I was going to drink and drug, I had to have money, and if I was going to have wheels, I had to have money.”
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Life as a Hustler
Bob describes much of his career as being a hustler – moving from one business enterprise to another.
“I’m a workaholic – I get right into whatever I get involved with,” Bob explained.
He started working at a bagel shop making deliveries to OSU.
Bob was then was offered a job as a night manager at a new delicatessen. However, when some friends came from Arkansas and asked him to go in with them on a farm to grow marijuana, he took them up on the offer and sold everything he had, including his car, to join them. He was part of the enterprise for about six months before he was thrown in jail for drinking. His friends got scared and abandoned the farm.
After his release, Bob harvested the weed and sold it in Washington, D.C. He went to Florida for a while, then back to Columbus. There he connected with a business selling vitamins. He helped open stores in Cleveland and Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as Minneapolis, Minnesota, and St. Louis, Missouri, then connected with a health food business and went to Orange County, California, to open up stores inside Sears Department Stores.
“I opened four of the wealthiest stores in Orange County and had a condo in Laguna Hills,” said Bob. “So all of a sudden I’m rubbing elbows with these muscle heads like Schwarzenegger and all the big-time 70s muscle heads, and I was giving them vitamins and having them come into the stores and make appearances.”
Eventually, Bob got tired of city life.
“I called my boss and said, ‘Hey, I’ve had enough. I’m just not built for this. I’ve got to be free.’”
He bought a custom van, quit his job, and headed to Pensacola, Florida. There, he helped open the first Wendy’s franchise restaurants in the Florida panhandle, but his friend fired him.
As Bob recounted: “I walk across the street, and they’re opening up a Mr. Gatti’s [Pizza], and I walked in the building, and they said, ‘We don’t have a manager. What are you doing now?’ I spent the next few months getting that store open.”
Bob met a woman at a party in Columbus who was being beaten by her fiancé. Bob told her she was welcome to come visit if she was ever in Florida, and one day she showed up in Pensacola and didn’t leave. They married and had a daughter and eventually moved to Sacramento, California, where Bob worked at a muffin company. However, the marriage did not work out, and Bob was off again.
This time, Bob moved from town to town across the United States working for temporary agencies. “A lot of times, if I got a good job, I just stole the job from the temp service and do it myself,” Bob added. “I worked my way all across the United States like that because every town was the same.”
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Getting Saved and Clean in Ohio
Bob made his way at last to Cincinnati, living in his car and with about 10 DUIs. He lived with a girlfriend for a little while in a house, but then that relationship ended.
On Dec. 31, 1999, Bob’s life changed. He was sharing a house with a friend and his girlfriend and was sitting upstairs on his bed.
“I just started crying, weeping,” Bob remembered. “I knelt in front of that bed and addressed the Lord. ‘Lord,’ I said, ‘I know I can’t do this alone, and I’d love to give you back the life that I never owned. If You could help me with this, I would love to be a strong soldier in Your army for the rest of my life.’”
He came downstairs and left the house to walk to the local bar. Two police officers came up behind him, and Bob turned himself in. He was sent to jail in Cincinnati with an 18-month sentence and lost his driver’s license for 10 years. The blessing was that there was a drug rehab as part of the jail system, and he was finally able to get sober and clean from alcohol and drugs.
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Gardening and Ministry
When Bob got out of jail this time, he started looking for work and found an advertisement for a gardener at a carriage house. The lady in charge saw his natural talent and recommended he become trained as a Master Gardener. He got his degree in 2002.
He also started as a sexton at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Cincinnati.
With all the rough living he had done over the years, Bob needed his teeth fixed, so he went to a dentist for the homeless population. She needed a janitor, and they worked out a deal where he cleaned her practice’s floor every Thursday and she fixed his teeth.
But the dentist did more for him than just dental work.
“She said, ‘I notice that you do a lot of street ministry and you help a lot of homeless people and you’re a resource guy, and I hear that you resource on the bus,’” Bob shared. “‘Well, I’d like to take you to Washington D.C. for a while to train. I want you to speak to large groups and help people understand where you’ve come from and where you’re going.’”
Through the church, he also ministered to the homeless and provided disaster relief.
“When they found out my street skills, I started doing mission trips for them and showing these young rich kids how to use saws and hammers and the real reason of being a Christian, to give your life away for others and to give your life away for others,” Bob said.
He spent 15 years as a missioner and went on 68 mission trips, including to Honduras, the Navajo Nation, Puerto Rico, and New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.
“I’ve just continued to do what the Lord has made capable for me,” Bob said.
During his ministry, Bob won numerous awards for advocacy, including the Jimmy Render Award from the Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless.
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Coming to Morning Pointe
Bob was living in New York when the COVID pandemic began, and he started talking online with a woman from Kentucky. He moved to Richmond to be near her and did a lot of work with the Richmond Community Garden, growing produce and sharing with those in need. In October 2022, he had a stroke and brain bleed. He was in the hospital for about two months.
The couple’s plans of marriage were put on hold as Bob could see the strain that his condition was placing on his girlfriend. He decided to go somewhere for a while where he could be cared for by professionals while his health improved. That place was Morning Pointe of Lexington-East Personal Care.
“This facility has continued to save this life of mine,” Bob said. “This place is absolutely phenomenal with how they treat their people. We’ve got a good head nurse and a staff that cares about everybody.”
Even one of the partnering on-site therapists helped Bob with maintaining his independence by getting him a bus pass and set him up with an app on his phone to follow the bus schedules.
Bob has also given back to Morning Pointe by helping start a walking group. He hopes to recover and return to Cincinnati… and to ministry.
“God has always been with me and has never left me,” Bob shared.
Thank you, Bob, for allowing Morning Pointe to be part of God’s ministry to you as you have ministered to others.
