Celebrating a Wonderful Life

Liz Brett of Westlake lost her husband Bobby in 2021. He was just 47 and left her with 3 young children.

Every year on the anniversary of his death, Liz and a group of friends go to breakfast in his honor. Each leaves the server a $100 tip, and the server goes home with over $1000.

Even if all her friends can’t go, they still send the tip.  And the memory of Robert Brett lives on in the same spirit he lived his life.

“Bob passed away five years ago.  He was awfully young and we wanted to think, what can you do? You want to do something. But you don’t want to make it a sad day because that was just not him” says Liz.

“He was just so generous, a successful businessman. And he always tried to make everybody’s life better. He was the best person anyone had ever met and I was lucky enough to have married him and had children with him.

“I had read those articles about acts of kindness and paying it forward and those kinds of things were very much my husband. So I brought it up to my friends.” It was a go.

It was also an idea that struck a chord with Liz personally. She worked as a server in college but ran short of cash and had some scary debt. “I was playing roulette with the parking meters downtown while I worked at the Chop House,” she said. “We were having a slow night and we only had one table. I was told to go home. I didn’t, and I decided to serve that one table. They left me $500! I didn’t know it at the time, but they were the DeBartolos (prominent Cleveland business family and owners of the NFL’s 49ers).

“So 4 years ago, my friends and I did the same thing. I think the server got 900 bucks. Juneberry Table (Cleveland restaurant) was the first and now Clifton Diner.

“Now we pay the check and talk about Bobby. He was just a happy, kind and wonderful soul. Every year the servers cry and we cry.

“This year’s server said she remembered us from four years ago and would be sharing the tip with the rest of her staff. They were all smiling. We were all smiling. This year there were no tears. It made us feel good.

“If you can do one thing and do it well and make one person’s day, that’s good enough.

“Now, everybody knows on March 6 we are going to celebrate a wonderful life.

“I think about this every day. It is both sides of the same coin. He was just this guy who wove this beautiful tapestry throughout his life. He taught me so much, just being around him.

“He kept his friends from grade school. They were his best friends all his life. His college friends, too. I could go on. He just collected people throughout his life. When you meet someone like that, you know how good it can be….”

Bobby was a St. Luke’s, St. Ed’s and Notre Dame guy. He didn’t live long enough to take his son to a Notre Dame football game. So his friends did it last year. As one of his kids said in the funeral procession, “I didn’t know dad was this famous!”

As for Liz, she plans to keep the tip tradition alive and also hopes to create an endowment scholarship at St. Ed. And she keeps paying it forward. Thank you. Bobby.