Bob and Joan Biebel met on the job, as Chicago police officers, and things progressed slowly, as love stories go.
“I chased him for eight years before I finally made him surrender at City Hall,” Joan Biebel said with a laugh.
“I wore high heels, and he had to park at the cheap parking lot three blocks away,” she said. “Our reception was at McDonald’s for a cup of coffee.”
Mr. Biebel kept their courtship close to the vest.
“He and I were partners for years — I had no idea they were dating,” recalled retired police officer Bobby Stevens. “Policemen sometimes are like old women, gossip wise. What’s that phrase from World War II … ‘Loose lips sink ships.'”
The couple was occasionally paired in the same beat car early in their careers before they took on separate duties.
They had a daughter and named her Annie.
After 38 years on the job, Mr. Biebel retired in 2010 as a lieutenant with a special victims unit working the West Side.
With more time on his hands, Mr. Biebel joyfully watched his daughter’s career as a consultant blossom.
She traveled regularly for work, and Mr. Biebel loved picking her up at O’Hare Airport. He didn’t mind heavy traffic. It meant more time with his daughter while driving her home to her downtown apartment.
Mr. Biebel died June 17 from natural causes, family said. He was 77.
Hours before he passed, he and his wife — foodies who loved exploring Chicago restaurants — hosted friends for dinner at their Sauganash home.
“He died in his sleep … an Irish goodbye,” said his wife. “I miss him very much, and I wish I was going out to dinner with him tonight. But I am very lucky, I have my daughter and my grandsons, and I had all those years with him.”
Mr. Biebel was born July 30, 1948, to Paul Biebel Sr. and Eleanor Sweeney Biebel. He was a mailman and a Big Ten basketball referee. She was a homemaker.
Mr. Biebel was the seventh of nine siblings. He had a wry smirk and a fondness for stirring things up.
“Dinner table rules were strictly enforced by our father, who was hard of hearing but could read lips,” said Mr. Biebel’s sister Rosemary Schulter. “So what you’d have to do is look down at your dinner plate to talk to someone across the dinner table, and Bobby knew how to upset the apple cart. He’d look at his plate and say something to antagonize someone and then of course the other kid who retaliated would get in trouble.”
Mr. Biebel attended Our Lady of Lourdes grammar school, St. George High School in Evanston and DePaul University, where he studied accounting.
He worked as an accountant before following in the footsteps of two older siblings who became police officers.
He never fully gave up accounting though. While on the police force, he scheduled his vacation during tax season to do accounting work with a firm with which he had a longstanding relationship.
“Bob epitomized what our mother and father taught us — work hard and do your job well,” said his brother Paul Biebel, a former chief judge of the Cook County Criminal Court.
Mr. Biebel served as a sounding board for many young police officers and happily showed many of them how to use data to assist in police investigations, his wife said.
He was also a voracious reader and served as the glue for groups of friends he made dating back to childhood, family said.
In recent years, Tom Corcoran talked to Mr. Biebel twice a day. They grew up near each other in a North Side neighborhood thick with large Irish families.
“He was a true character,” said Corcoran, who caddied with Mr. Biebel, as well as actor Bill Murray, at Indian Hill Country Club in Winnetka when they were kids. “I reach for my phone to talk to him, and he’s not there.”
Mr. Biebel is survived by his wife, his daughter, Annie Lewandowski, and two grandsons.
Services have been held.
