Our story begins with this picture. Those are my two amazing children that are a bit older now, and that fantastically beautiful face to the right is my little brother Robin Lorea Krueger. If there ever was a selfless soul on this earth it was this guy, and I’ll explain why. Just to give you some brief history, I am one of three really cool kids…there’s me, my older brother Chris and then there’s
Robin, the youngest. We grew up as military brats (GO AIR FORCE!) living all over this great country. With our dad hailing from Wyoming and mom from Georgia we were lucky kids to be able to vacation or should I say ‘camp’ across the United States. These were my fondest childhood memories because we were all together having a great time. When we would find the perfect camping spot my dad would send us hooligans to go gather firewood (probably just to get us out of his hair), and that was free time to mess around! On one particular trip Robin, who was about 5 at the time, found this amazing hill to roll down! I mean, it was fall, leaves on the ground and there was this glorious hill that was just calling our names! But you couldn’t just roll, no. Robin developed this technique that required great skill…you JUMPED then rolled, all the while screaming ‘HUNGY BUNGY!’
I’m pretty sure my little brother was trying to yell kowabunga…he was never good with words. For Pete’s sake, he thought for years that we lived in the state of Virgeorgia. Funny stuff. As we got older we all went in our own directions. Chris joined the Army, I moved to New York and Robin, well… Robin was doing Robin things. He moved here and there and eventually ended up in Atlanta, Georgia. He and his girlfriend both tended bar while running a business during the day. They probably didn’t live in the best of neighborhoods and there seemed to be a number of homeless people in the area. I wasn’t surprised when Robin called me up one day and told me he had taken in a homeless man and he was living in his garage. Wow…he and I are cut from the same cloth because I wasn’t alarmed at all, it actually made me cry…especially when he told me the man was a homeless veteran. Our father had recently passed away at this point in our lives and I feel Robin needed this as much as the gentleman living in his garage did. It was a selfless act of love for someone else that he didn’t even know. How brave was that? More brave than I could ever hope to be. Robin was full of hopes and dreams and forever chasing rainbows. He truly believed that he would catch one someday, and he would have you all excited and caught up in it as well! His spirit was infectious! I believe that he caught that rainbow the day he helped that homeless veteran. He sadly is no longer with us today, but that kid who threw a bit of caution to the wind lives on inside my heart and his legend lives on with Hungy Bungy.
