Bob DuCharme was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut on October 19, 1935, and grew up in nearby Milford with his sisters Lorraine, Joan, and Dorothy. He played football at Milford High School, where he was president of his senior class. He and his best friend and class vice president, Jim Farrell, loved to perform song and dance routines that they reprised at class reunions over 50 years later.
With plans to become an actor, Bob graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City in 1958. While working as an NBC page on Jack Paar's Tonight Show he and several other pages had their own Saturday morning TV show, “Al Rucker and the Seven Teens,” on a Providence Rhode Island NBC affiliate, where they performed skits to the current top hits.
Bob's show business career was interrupted when he was drafted into the Army in 1959. He married his girlfriend, Lorinda (Linda) Case, and she joined him in Germany, where he was stationed. They remained happily married until her death from Parkinson's Disease in 2020.
Upon their return to the US, he worked in advertising sales at the Milford Citizen newspaper. He began directing plays and musicals in community theaters in southern Connecticut, including the musical “Oliver” at New Haven's Hopkins School in 1971. After directing several more shows there, he accepted the school's offer of a full-time position as a drama teacher and director in 1973. He went on to direct several shows a year at Hopkins including musicals such as "Guys and Dolls", "Oklahoma," and "Anything Goes," and plays such as "Our Town," "Don't Drink the Water," and "The Glass Menagerie." One of Bob's great joys as a director was giving lead roles to students with minimal acting experience and then seeing their stage talent surprise everyone — especially students who were more known for their athletic achievements than theatrical activities. This joy continued throughout his later career of directing community theater.
In his classroom at Hopkins, Bob taught theater history, public speaking, advertising, and more. One student later remembered: "Throughout the years I have given thousands of presentations and at the beginning of each one, I flash back to DuCharme 101: Never read from a script — bullet points only, make lots of eye contact, and keep moving. Looking back, I can honestly tell you that he did make a profound impact on me as person, a father, a husband and a business owner." In the words of another, "Mostly, I remember the comedy. I remember laughing so hard sometimes in the classroom or auditorium with him that my stomach hurt and tears sprung from my eyes."
With the academic schedule leaving Bob's summers free, he produced twelve successful seasons of dinner theater in Milford after he convinced a local Holiday Inn manager to let him build a set and cast and publicize plays by Neil Simon and other popular playwrights.
Bob taught and directed at Hopkins until he and Linda moved to Brookline, Vermont in 1985. He then worked on the advertising staff of the Brattleboro Reformer, where Linda was the night editor, until his retirement. He continued to teach public speaking and to direct plays and musicals in the Brattleboro area, bringing the total number of productions he had directed in his career up to 118.
He loved cooking, gardening, eating, drinking, painting, and traveling with Linda. They made their most recent trip to Europe in 2006 when they visited the German family who they had lived with 46 years earlier during Bob's military service. Their 61-year marriage was an inspiration to all of their family and friends.
Bob passed away on January 7, 2024 at Vernon Green in Vernon, Vermont, where he had been a resident for several years. He will be remembered for his boundless enthusiasm, his sense of humor, and his creativity. He is survived by his sisters Joan and Dorothy, his children Bob Jr., Ann, Julie, and Peter, six grandchildren, and a great-grandson.
To leanr more about Linda, visit lduchar.me.