Dr. Robert Michael Hakala

Published 6:30 am Saturday, May 24, 2025

Dr. Robert Michael Hakala August 29, 1941 – May 11, 2025

Bob was born in Portland, Oregon on August 29th, 1941. He was the oldest of three sons born to Rudy and Marion Hakala. He graduated from Beaverton High School where he was active in sports, the church high school youth group, Young Life and debate team. Career day in high school set him in motion to pursue a career in medicine. He attended Willamette University as a pre-med major and joined the Sigma Chi fraternity. He worked several jobs to put himself through school.

His freshmen year at Willamette, he met Caro, his future bride while she was attending the University of Oregon. He always said it was “love at first sight”. They got engaged the summer before their senior year and married on August 18th, 1963, in a Methodist Church in Salem.

Bob went to Oregon Medical School in Portland, while Caro taught high school foreign language classes in Lake Oswego. After graduation, he completed his internship at Santa Clara Valley Medical School where he was named “Intern of the Year”. Bob was committed to spending two years in military service during the Vietnam War. After six weeks of medical officer basic training in Texas to prepare him for Vietnam, he was surprised to find he was being stationed in Memphis, Tennessee as a Chief Medical Officer at an Entrance and Examining Station. A year later, he was stationed in Newport News, Virginia as one of three physicians to be part of an inspector general team for the Armed forces recruiting command.

Bob finished his residency at Oregon Health Sciences and became board certified that same year. He then practiced family medicine for a few years in the same area but felt called to move his family to a smaller town where he could live and work closer to his patients.

In 1976, Bob moved his family, now including two sons and a daughter, to Bend, Oregon to join Bend Memorial Clinic. He was the 15th physician in that group at the time. It was here he settled into his practice and community for the duration of his career.

He was a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society and was named “The Oregon Family Physician of the Year” in 2003 by the Oregon Academy of Family Physicians. He has served as President of St. Charles Medical Staff and a past Chairman of the Clinic’s Executive Committee. He volunteered and served on the Medical Advisory Committee of the Washington Family Ranch, a Young Life Camp near Antelope, Oregon.

After twenty-nine years of “wonderful” practice, he retired from the clinic to become the Medical Director of Volunteers in Medicine Clinic for which he was a founding board member. He hung up his stethoscope in 2016 at the age of 75.

In the summer of 2017, Bob fulfilled a lifetime dream of traveling to Finland to meet his grandfather’s side of the family. His other interests were men’s Bible Studies, reading, traveling, rooting for both the Ducks and the Beavers, and serving others. Most of all, Bob loved spending time with his grandchildren. They were his pride and joy.

Bob was a devoted husband and a committed and involved father to his children. To his grandchildren, he is known as Poppy. Like his patients, he connected with each of his grandchildren individually. He was a father who lived his faith openly and led by example.

Bob is preceded in death by his wife, Caro, and younger brother, Don Hakala. Bob is survived by his brother, Scott Hakala (Nancy), sister in law (Gingir), children Rob (Julie), Todd (Denise), and Molly Milby along with his eight grandchildren, Ryan, Emma, and Ellie Hakala (Rob’s children), Katie, Jonathan, and Tim Hakala (Todd’s children), and Abby and Cameron Milby (Molly’s children) and one great-grandson, Alex (Katie and Chris Osborne).

Services will be held at Westside Church in Bend on Saturday, May 31st at 2 pm. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to Volunteers in Medicine.