Robert D. McCleary passed away on June 4, 2025. Robert had been struggling with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) for the previous two years. Robert was born on August 10, 1950, in Muskegon, MI. While still a toddler, he moved with his family to Brooklyn, NY and then as a young boy to Miami, FL. He was a proud graduate of Coral Gables High School where he was senior class president and went on to complete his undergraduate degree at Harvard University in Visual and Environmental Studies (1972).

Robert was a gifted painter, but after college he moved into computer graphics, working as a graphic designer for various television news stations over the years, including NBC and CNN. In this work he combined his interests in art, technology, and current events. By the end of the 1980s, however, Robert had reached the conclusion that television news had devolved into cheap entertainment. His disillusionment led him to reexamine his Catholic faith which became his main focus in the following years even as he continued to work as a graphic designer. In the latter capacity he was highly successful, winning five Emmy Awards between 1992 and 2010 for his work on NBC’s coverage of the summer and winter Olympic Games. (Five days before he died, while a patient in hospice care at the University of Miami Hospital, Robert managed to create his last painting, an abstract watercolor.)

In 1990 he was awarded a year-long William Benton Fellowship in Broadcast Journalism which permitted him to study philosophy and theology at the University of Chicago. A year later he began the full-time study of Catholic theology at Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, MA, completing the MDiv degree (1995) and the ThM degree at Harvard Divinity School (2001). His personal and academic journeys thus combined to prepare him for the work he would later do with the Paulist Fathers’ Landings program for returning Catholics.

Before he arrived at Landings, however, Robert had thrown himself into several other mini-careers, working as a real estate agent in Boston, as a data base manager at Barry University in Miami Shores, FL, and as a mentor teaching 3D printing and design at the yOUmake Miami maker space of the Miami Beach Regional Library. What remained constant throughout all his years and careers was Robert’s prodigious appetite for good food and its preparation, fascination with movies old and new, and love for music and art of all kinds. He liked nothing better than to spend the day tracking down the ingredients for a recipe he had just read about in the New York Times and then preparing and serving a masterpiece to his spouse or a group of friends.

Robert leaves his spouse James Nickoloff with whom he spent 31 years, his sister Linda Pardue, his nephew Ryan Klatt, and his niece Heather Klatt. His intellectual curiosity, commitment to justice, sense of humor, unfailing kindness, and simple humility will be sorely missed by his many friends around the world.