Coastal Star: Bob Welstein

7960441460?profile=originalAt 94, Bob Welstein has no intention of slowing down. He still personally oversees the lecture program he started in South Palm Beach that now bears his name. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

By Ron Hayes

    Robert Welstein had a heart attack at 49.
    The doctor gave him five years to live.
    That was in 1968.
    Now Robert Welstein is 94.
    And the doctor?
    Welstein shrugs. “He died.”
    Bob Welstein is still very much alive, still driving, still ready to give an opinion on just about anything, and still on a quest for knowledge.
    On Feb. 26, the town of South Palm Beach officially renamed its Quest For Knowledge lecture series the Robert Welstein Quest For Knowledge in honor of the man who founded it 15 years ago.
    The framed proclamation was prominently displayed in Town Hall on a recent Monday morning as about 25 men and women moseyed in, helped themselves to cookies and found a seat.
    The speakers change weekly, but there are always cookies, and Welstein always appears in a coat and tie.
    “One thing I’ve learned,” he says, “if you want the respect of the crowd and the speaker, you dress in a jacket and tie. If you want respect, you have to show respect.”
    The speaker that morning was supposed to be George Feirstein, discussing Broadway musicals, but a bad back had forced him to cancel. With little warning, Welstein drafted Herbert Haber, a retired CPA who once taught tax law.
    This was not a major crisis for Welstein.
    “One time I scheduled a doctor who was supposed to discuss dementia,” Welstein said, “and he forgot to show up.”
    The 10-lecture series runs from January to March, but Welstein begins scheduling speakers in July.
    “I have two concerns,” he explains about the subjects. “They have to be informative, and they have to be entertaining. I refuse anyone who wants to read something they found on a computer. And I want controversy.”
    He’s welcomed Sid Dinerstein, head of the county GOP, and liberal Democrat Lois Frankel. TV weathermen and newspaper columnists, lawyers and educators.
    “Whatever Bob wants to do, I tell him, do it,” says Mayor Donald Clayman. “I trust him totally. He gets speakers who normally charge pretty good fees, and he’s getting them for free. People just enjoy being with him.”
    A Chicago native, he’s owned the same Chateau Royale condo since 1979 and been a permanent resident since 1997. As a president of the Center for Lifetime Learning at Palm Beach State College, he organized a lecture bureau there, then transferred the concept to South Palm Beach.
    He and his late wife, Eleanor, were married for 62 years.
    He has two children — a son and daughter — and four grandchildren, about whom he promises not to bore you.
    “I’m responsible for the kids I brought into the world, and they’re responsible for their kids,” he says. “People who say, ‘Let me tell you about my grandchildren,’ I want to hit them in the head.”
    His children want him to retire.
    “Nuts to them,” he says. “When I die, I’ll quit.”          

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