Robert Arthur: The Godfather of Lawnmowers 1948-2021

by Charles McGuigan 12.2021

Robert Arthur left home early that morning, not long after six, as was his wont. Before arriving at Arthur’s Electric, the family business he had taken over thirty-five years before, he stopped at the convenience store owned by Mr. Patel. He bought a monster drink, a pack of cigarettes, and, as an afterthought, a single lottery ticket. When his wife Linda entered Arthur’s Electric two hours later, he wolf-whistled at her, wearing his customary smile, as he hunched over the counter, a cigarette smoldering in an ashtray as big as a salad plate. Throughout the morning he fielded phone calls, and waited on a dozen people. He checked the status of some stocks he had recently purchased, then scratched the lottery ticket, and discovered he had won fifty dollars. Just after ten he lifted up a large propane tank, and felt a slight tightening in his chest, and, as had been his custom since he had gotten sick some months before, Robert left the shop a few minutes before eleven. He drove straight over to the convenience store to redeem his lottery ticket. He pulled into a space, thrust the gearshift into park, and cut the engine. That’s when his heart stopped.

“He did what he did every morning, and with extras,” Linda Arthur tells me, recalling the November day her husband died. “As he was walking out the door that morning, I said, ‘Call me when you get home.’ Within ten minutes of him leaving here we got the call that he was dead.”

Here in the business office at Arthur’s Electric, I’m facing an arc made up of the three women in Robert Arthur’s life—his wife, Linda, of course, and his daughters, Tonda and Barrett. 

Linda begins telling me about the man she was married to for half a century. She considers Robert’s unflagging integrity in all things. “He was truthful and honest,” says Linda. “He was honest with the customers, he was honest with me and the family. He was the most honest person I have ever known. And there were times you didn’t want to hear what he had to say, but you always knew he was being honest.”  

Robert also avoided the limelight at all costs. “Robert was always real humble,” says Linda. “He downplayed his achievements.”  Over the years Robert was recognized for his business acumen. His business was named a Henrico Legacy Company, and he was nominated by the Retail Merchants Association for the Distinguished Retailer of the Year Award.

He also supported organizations committed to making his community a better place for all. He and Linda have volunteered with the Glen Allen Ruritan for twenty-five years. As a matter of fact, they served as grand marshals for the Glen Allen Day Parade.  Robert and his wife are also supportive of the Healy Gala, which each year awards a scholarship to a graduating senior from Glen Allen High School. And for many years now, Arthur’s Electric has donated generously to St. Joe’s Villa. The Arthurs also supported the Richmond Symphony’s Youth Orchestra. “Robert also always gave discounts to any police, firefighter or military serviceman,” says Linda. “And if any church were having a fundraiser he would always donate.”

Robert was never one to harbor a grudge or fan the flames of resentment. “He would argue with you and then five minutes later it was like you never had an argument,” Tonda, his oldest daughter, tells me, and Linda nods.

Linda’s eyes move across her daughters, and her gaze settles on her grandson, Brighton. “Robert had so many families,” Linda says, and tears well up in her eyes. “He had bowling families, and people that we traveled with, and our customer family, and our family, and a work family. Everybody here has been working at Arthur’s for fifteen years or more.” 

In less than two years, Arthur’s Electric will celebrate its 100th anniversary. “Arthur’s Electric started in 1923, so in 2023 it will be a hundred years old,” says Linda. “I think that’s one of the reasons Robert didn’t retire.”

Linda first laid eyes on Robert when the pair attended Brookland School, but they would not start dating until several years later. While Linda attended Hermitage High School, Robert went to Fork Union Military Academy. After high school Robert went to Ferrum Junior College, and Linda studied art at Longwood College. And during her college, Linda dated a number of other young men along with Robert. Once Robert finished his studies at Ferrum, he joined the U.S. Army National Guard and was stationed at Fort Rucker in Alabama. And though he was in active service for two years, Linda until recently didn’t know he was a veteran. “He just never talked about it,” she says. 

As a kid, Robert was a Virginia State Go-Kart Champion, and racing in one form or other remained a passion throughout his life, whether it was riding an ATV or testing the maximum velocity of a jet ski at the Arthur’s river home—one of his favorite places in the world.

At that riverfront property, early in the morning, before anyone else in the house had risen, as the stars began to fade and the planets continued to wander, as a faint silver sliver marked the curvature of the horizon, and as the tide shifted, backwashing the natural flow of the river, Robert would make his way to the sandy shore, listening to the faint lapping of the tidewater, and then he would face the East, almost reverentially, pull his phone from his pocket, tap the camera mode on the black mirror, and wait for that uncanny resurrection of light that came with the dawn as it has since time immemorial.  And then he would snap photo after photo, capturing in the blink of the camera’s eyes that moment of renewal. 

“He did this religiously,” Linda says. 

“When we scrolled through his phone there were just tons of them,” says Tonda.

“Some were photos and some were videos, but they were all of the rising sun,” Linda adds.

Though Robert was a member of Bethlehem Methodist Church, he was not a regular churchgoer, for he believed Christianity was rooted in corporal works of mercy, in practicing what Christ had preached, and not in dogma or institutions. “Robert thought to be a Christian was to do the right thing, and you didn’t have to go to church,” Linda says. “It was in you and your actions.”

That being said, not long ago Robert did receive the Holy Eucharist in both its species, if almost accidentally. While Linda attended services, Robert waited in the car that morning. Suddenly a woman appeared by the driver’s side door. She held a chalice and a paten.

“She thought he was just waiting for me,” Linda recalls. “And so she gave him Communion.”

When the service was over and Linda returned to the car, Robert said, “I just had Communion.”

“Really?” Linda ask. “They made you have Communion?”

Robert shook his head. “No, she just came out with the plate and the bread and the wine, and it made me cry.”

“So that was his last communion,” Linda tells me.

His family, his business, his employees, his customers were always on his mind. “He would wake up at five in the morning,” Barrett tells me. “Sometimes he couldn’t sleep because he was thinking about the business or his employees or his customers. A lot of people that weren’t family didn’t see the hours that he would wake up in the middle of the night thinking about how to work through things.”

That was particularly true during the pandemic. Richard could easily have shuttered the business for an extended time and lived on savings. “But he thought about everybody else,” says Tonda. Her sister nods. Robert understood that his employees needed job security, and that his customers, who were gearing up for their busy spring season just as COVID shut down many other businesses, required his services to survive. Robert often put the needs of others above his own.

“His actions showed you what he thought was right,” says Barrett. “And that was somebody that was reliable, that was somebody that you could count on, and I thought it was God working through him.”

Barrett remembers when she was in college driving home from Virginia Beach through a driving rain that fell in columns. She was travelling on fumes when the last cylinder fired with a sputter, and Barrett found herself stranded by the side of the road in New Kent County. It was in an era before cell phones, so through the pouring rain she hunted down a pay phone, fed a quarter into the slot, and called her father, even though it was the middle of the night. 

“He drove all the way from Richmond with a can of gas to fill my car and to make sure I was okay,” Barrett says. “I can’t count how many times I depended on him. That’s something I’ll miss. You always knew he would always be there for you.”

“He had friends of every background and he would not say anything bad about anyone,” Tonda says, and then she smiles, remembering something her father had given her.  

“One time he gave me an award because I tended to be a little late most mornings,” she says. “He had drawn a star on a sheet of paper, and put it up here on the window. It was called the On Time Award and it was the best prize I’ve ever gotten.”