2075627566.jpg &&& FORT WORTH — First thing every morning, Robert Sample retrieved the newspaper from the yard, pulled out the Fort Worth section and went straight for the obituaries.He always joked with his family that he was making sure he wasn’t in there.On Tuesday morning, he didn’t check the newspaper. But his family did."My grandson said, 'Mimi, Papa finally made the obituaries,’ " Gloria Sample said.Mr. Sample, 75, a lifetime railroad man, Boy Scout leader and amateur historian, died Sunday in a local hospital of complications from heart surgery.He would have undoubtedly liked the obituaries joke. Optimism was built into his DNA."He always told me, 'It’s not as bad as you think’ or 'It will be all right. Calm down,’ " said his wife of 31 years. "I prepare myself for the worst. Not him."Mr. Sample was born Dec. 10, 1932, to a Methodist minister and a homemaker who lived in the Rock Island neighborhood outside downtown. He and his older brother had a great backyard playground: the Trinity River.They also caught more than a few Fort Worth Cats games as part of the "knothole gang" that watched from the outfield.In 1951, after graduating from Amon G. Carter-Riverside High School, Mr. Sample went to work for the Rock Island Railroad as a switchman. After two years, he switched to working for Union Pacific Railroad."It was a good-paying job," his wife said. "That’s what he wanted. That’s why he didn’t want to be a minister."Fifty years went by before Mr. Sample retired as a car inspector, the same job he’d hired on to do. In railroad terms, he was a "car man" and a lifetime union member.He started at the old Texas & Pacific train station downtown, checking cars pulled by steam engines. When he retired, he was working at the massive Centennial yard off Vickery Boulevard.All those years and never an injury."The railroad pounded safety into our heads, and Bobby was a fast learner," said Wayne "Duce" Vance, who knew Mr. Sample for 41 years. "He was one of the most careful men on the railroad. He was always one of the first to volunteer to work trains, and he’d take the younger car men under his wing."When he retired, the company invited his wife and him to Salt Lake City for a party, paid for their hotel and told him he could order anything he wanted off the dinner menu. He took them at their word.He ordered the $65 lobster.He had many interests other than railroads. He served as a leader of Cub Scouts and then Boy Scouts in Troop 16 for 32 years and watched two of his sons earn Eagle Scout honors.He loved to travel and camp, and did so for a time in a Volkswagen camper that puttered all over the West and Canada. He also had an abiding love for Texas history, bought a 19th-century house on a hill that overlooked the Stockyards and participated in the North Fort Worth Historical Society."It wasn’t nothing to have 35 or 40 people here for Thanksgiving or Christmas," his wife said. "On July Fourth, everybody came here because they knew we would have homemade ice cream. We’d have three or four people cranking that ice cream all day."Independence Day this year was the first since they bought the house almost 30 years ago that no one made ice cream for their party. Mr. Sample had gone into the hospital for heart surgery, which resulted in a post-operative blood clot from which he never recovered.His family had to unhook him from life support to let nature run its course. But he had one more party in him."He had told me over the years, 'Don’t you ever let machines keep me alive,’ " his wife said. "July 12 was our wedding anniversary, and I told the doctors that I wanted him with me on our anniversary. We got a cake and the whole family and his railroad buddies came in and out of the room all day Saturday." Funeral 2:30 p.m. Thursday at Lucas Funeral Home, 517 N. Sylvania Ave.