Let’s take a break from baby product news to mourn the passing of syndicated real estate columnist Bob Bruss.

We met Bob when we wrote our book, Your New House (which was a guide to buying or building a new home). Bob picked our book as one of the top 10 real estate books of 1993 in his column—and we still remember the day his column hit, as our phone lines lit up with thousands of readers calling to order the book (yes, in the days before the internet, folks ordered books by phone).

Bob Bruss was not only a columnist, teacher and author—but also, we can say, a dear friend. We often met Bob at the National Association of Home Builders conventions (imagine 65,000 home builders in one place, scary we know).

In the evening, the builders would sponsor special press events—these were usually held at model homes that were showing off the latest building innovation, design trends, etc. Of course, these homes were usually a distance from the convention center, in some obscure subdivision so new that street signs weren’t put up yet (again, before the days of GPS).

So the builders would put all the press on a special press bus (imagine us, Bob and 50 other grumpy real estate writers) . . . which would promptly get lost in the back roads of Houston, Atlanta or wherever.

So we quickly learned to rent a car (and get a good map) to avoid being trapped on the press bus to hell—-Bob always volunteered to ride shotgun on these trips, offering his expert navigation skills to find the press events.

We loved visiting with Bob on these trips—he’d share how learned about real estate investing the hard way (that is, losing a ton of money). How he’d built his newsletter empire. How he loved teaching and sharing his knowledge on real estate with his students and readers.

As the saying goes, Bob forgot more about real estate than we’ll ever know.

Bob also was fascincated with how a couple of kids (we were in our 20’s at the time) like us figured out how to write a best-selling book on real estate (and weddings, and baby gear, etc). Along the way, he introduced us to numerous other journalists and writers, always with a kind word to say about our books and writing. He always give us numerous ideas for new books—suggestions based on the hundreds of questions he’d get each week from his readers.

Bob was gracious, endearing and a true gentlemen. He will be missed.

(Read more about Bob here).