Robert A Farmer

The middle of three brothers, Robert A. Farmer grew up in Lakewood, Ohio. His father, Sterling, was vice president of a company that mined and distributed foundry sand from the upper Great Lakes. His mother, the former Eleanor Sandberg, was a homemaker. Mr. Farmer graduated from University School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where he played piano and led a band. In 1960, Mr. Farmer graduated from Dartmouth College, and subsequently took time off from Harvard Law School, from which he also graduated, to found an education publishing company. The business flourished, providing the financial independence to enter the world of politics, first with the 1980 presidential campaign of Republican-turned-independent John Anderson. Mr. Farmer sent a $1,000 contribution and a note offering assistance and soon discovered his talent for campaign funding. Not long after that race, he arranged to meet with Dukakis, the then-former and future Massachusetts governor who was planning a campaign to return to his State House office. Mr. Farmer sold most of his publishing interests in the early 1980s. Through the years, his business affiliations included serving as senior vice president of the Washington, D.C., lobbying firm Cassidy and Associates, as vice chairman of International Data Group, and as chairman of Charlesbridge, a children’s publishing company in Watertown run by his brother, Brent. In the late-1970s, Mr. Farmer sponsored two brothers who were refugees from Vietnam and adopted one of them, Thieu Nguyen. Mr. Farmer spoke in 2000 to The Advocate, an LGBT-interest publication, about being gay and a high-ranking official in presidential campaigns in an era when many gays and lesbians concealed their sexual orientation so they could take part in national politics. In addition to his husband, son, and brother, Mr. Farmer leaves three grandchildren.