Bob Funk Sr. Remembered: Code of the West and American Dream Lived in Full

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“It’s a museum that focuses on family, friends, faith—all part of the Code of the West,” Keating described. “Pull yourselves up by your boots, live each day with courage, and ride…

Newsweek Columnist, Vice President of Content at Salem Media Group and host of "Our American Stories"

It’s a name you’ll bump into when you walk the halls of one of America’s finest museums, and it’s no accident the exhibit this man funded at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City is called “Prosperity Junction.” Bob Funk Sr.’s life had everything to do with finding work—and pathways to prosperity—for more than 7 million Americans through the employment agency he founded.

None of it was possible without the values he learned growing up in Duvall, Washington, a small farming community of 300 people. And the hardships he endured in his remarkable life.

Born in 1940 as America was easing out of the Great Depression, Funk’s home life was anything but prosperous.

"My mother had a nervous breakdown when I was 2 and my sister took care of me until my mom got well," Funk told Our American Stories in 2020.

What he didn't know until his mother passed was the cause of her breakdown.

"I looked at the family farm checkbook and we were going broke," he lamented.

It took five years before his mom was back to her old self, and it was a job that did it.

"She went to work at a grocery store, free of charge, for our groceries," Funk explained. "I had four shirts through high school and three pair of Levi's. That's all I had."

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