There was a time when Robert “Bob” Seurkamp was often the only man in the room.

As the “first first man” of Notre Dame of Maryland University, he often attended conferences and dinners with his wife, Mary Pat, the president of the school from 1997 to 2012. He didn’t mind standing out at spouse-only events, friends said — he wore the title like a badge of honor and charmed the room with his easygoing smile and demeanor.

“He just greeted everyone with warmth,” said Pat Bosse, a longtime friend. “You felt like you finished a conversation with him, and he was genuinely interested in whatever story it was that you told.”

It was hard to get information out of him, Bosse joked, but there was plenty to share. He had a long and varied life. Seurkamp, a former business leader and executive director of the Maryland Governor’s Workforce Investment Board who retired in Baltimore, died July 18 of heart failure. He was 85.

He was born Oct. 2, 1939, and grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, with four siblings: Bill, Beverly, Sharon and Debi. He started working at a local hardware store as a high school student and continued after graduation. Building and fixing things became a hobby and passion as much as a job.

He enlisted in the military shortly after, deciding to chart his own path instead of facing an uncertain future if drafted. After working as a weapons control technician in the Air Force for four years, he launched a 25-year career with the Xerox Corporation. He started as a technician and moved up the ranks into management and executive positions.

While working at Xerox, Seurkamp took classes at Miami University in Ohio and started a family. He married a nurse, Joan Everett Seurkamp, and had two children, Kris and Robert. But tragedy struck quickly: His wife fell sick and died when their oldest child was 5 years old.

The next few years were a bit chaotic, said his daughter, Kris Seurkamp Knauf. The Xerox job moved the family outside of Boston, to Greenwich, Connecticut, and later to Rochester, New York. Seurkamp married again and had another daughter, Brooke. He got divorced.

Through it all, Seurkamp was the one constant for his kids, Seurkamp Knauf said. When he traveled for work, he called every night. The family adopted dogs and had regular meals together. He wanted his children to have a nice house and maintained as much of a sense of normality as possible, Seurkamp Knauf said.

“That’s something that he passed along to all of us kids, is that there can be chaos in your life, but you have to learn to manage it,” she said. “You can’t let the chaos control you, and it made us be very flexible people and able to make new friends easily.”

But with chaos came fun, too. When his kids were young, Seurkamp took them out fishing and to amusement parks. They went Go-Kart racing, and he taught them to “drive like maniacs,” his daughter joked.

Life fell into place in upstate New York, introducing a new sense of stability for the family. Seurkamp was connected with Mary Pat through mutual friends in 1981, and they met over lunch. Unknown to them, both of their assistants had blocked off their entire afternoons, and they spent hours talking about their shared family values and deep faith. They married two years later.

They both had busy jobs and educational commitments but made it work. Bob Seurkamp completed his bachelor’s degree at Empire State College, now university. He retired from Xerox around 1990 and bought East Bluff Harbor Marina on one of the Finger Lakes.

Seurkamp had always been a boat guy, and one of his daughter’s earliest memories is of her father building his own speedboat. The water was his happy place, whether he was racing boats, sitting on the beach, swimming, tubing or water skiing.

The whole family took shifts at the marina. After long days working together, he’d say, “Let’s go for a boat ride,” and the whole crew would get ready for some sort of water activity or a dinner at a restaurant on the lake.

It was like that until 1997, when Mary Pat was named president of Notre Dame of Maryland University. She moved down to Baltimore while her husband stayed behind an extra year to sell the marina and tie up loose ends before joining her. He started a labor relations consulting business and worked with Baltimore Gas and Electric and The Burke Group, an international consulting firm.

The couple fell in love with Baltimore, the life they were building here and the friends they made, Mary Pat Seurkamp said. Every year, they hosted a massive Christmas reception at their house.

Bob Seurkamp was Mary Pat’s biggest supporter, and they were the best team, said Patricia “PJ” Mitchell, a past chair of Notre Dame’s Board of Trustees.

“He was just one of those glass-half-full guys all the time, incredibly positive,” Mitchell said. “I’m sure he had his moments, but I never saw him as anything but genuinely happy, positive, supportive.”

Bob Seurkamp was a regular presence at Notre Dame events, and he knew just about everyone, from faculty to donors to housekeeping staff, said longtime friend Frank Gunther. He was also very invested in the renovation of the school’s Marikle Chapel of the Annunciation, excited by the construction details and the connection with his faith.

In the early 2000s, former Gov. Robert Ehrlich named Bob Seurkamp the executive director of the Maryland Governor’s Workforce Investment Board, a policymaking group focused on growing businesses and employment opportunities in the state. He worked closely with former Maryland Department of Labor Secretary Jim Fielder, who said Seurkamp easily connected with people of varied backgrounds.

Among Seurkamp’s accomplishments: He helped hospitals standardize job descriptions to make transfers easier and prioritized apprenticeship and career growth programs, Fielder said.

Seurkamp understood and exemplified the “twin sisters of leadership,” his colleague said — optimism and team-building. He believed “workforce development is economic development, and the base of both is education,” Fielder said.

Bob and Mary Pat Seurkamp loved the Baltimore area so much they retired here more than a decade ago. Bob had spent years fixing up a waterfront property they owned in Middle River that was originally just “studs and insulation,” his wife said.

They lived there with their boxer, Gabriella, among Seurkamp’s vast collection of early American pottery. The couple also often hosted the youngest members of the Seurkamp clan, who called their grandfather “Papa.” He built games for them to play and taught some to fish.

“He had a lot of challenges that were always put in his way in his early life, and yet he just made a great life for himself, and invested in his own education, himself and his own professional development, and invested always in learning,” Mary Pat Seurkamp said. “But I think, mostly, he will be remembered for the kind, loving person he was.”

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