Robert Louis Borgstede was not a silly man. He was born in August 1932 and was raised in north St. Louis. He was the oldest of three children and the only son of Alberta and Robert Engel Borgstede.

Alberta's maiden name was Moore. Her brother was Carl Moore, a doctor and researcher who taught at Washington University School of Medicine. There is now a Carl Moore Auditorium at the school. When the school celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1991, much was made of the fact that more than a dozen Nobel Laureates either graduated from the school or did their prize-winning research there, and yet the anniversary story in this newspaper cited Moore as the man who most personified what a medical school is all about.

"Carl Moore bridged the 'bench and the bedside,' going back and forth from the laboratory to the patient to shed more light on the deeper causes of disease," said Dr. Virgil Loeb Jr.

That was Robert Louis Borgstede's uncle. And what of his father, Robert Engel Borgstede?

He was a bottle-washer at Pevely Dairy, and then he got a job in a chemical laboratory at Procter & Gamble. He spent years at the lab, and according to family lore, should have been running the place, but was held back by the lack of a college degree. So he persevered until his children were educated, and only then did he go to college. He earned a degree in chemistry from Washington University in 1958, five years after his son had graduated with a degree in health and physical education.

After graduating in the spring of 1953, Robert Louis Borgstede married Nola Kershaw, his longtime sweetheart. They had met at Bethany Evangelical and Reformed Church.

In the fall of 1953, he got a teaching job in Ferguson. Two weeks after the semester began, he was drafted. He was sent to Korea where he served in the Military Police.

When he returned to civilian life, he resumed his teaching career. He had a distinguished career in the Ferguson-Florissant School District. He started as a P.E. teacher and then went into administration. He served as a principal in grade schools and middle schools. When the district established the Little Creek Nature Area, a 97-acre outdoor educational facility, he became its first director.

He and Nola raised three sons. He retired in 1983.

In 2006, the extended family met for the Memorial Day weekend at a resort on the Jacks Fork River. The resort is owned by the Missouri State Teachers Association, and the family had vacationed there for many years.

On Saturday morning, Robert Louis Borgstede spoke to his oldest son, Robert Thomas Borgstede. He said he wanted to gather the family at dinner to make an announcement.

For the son's response, let me quote from a letter he has recently written to President Barack Obama.

"This was unusual. What was he going to say? So I asked, 'Dad, what do you need to tell everyone?' He said, 'Well, I wanted to surprise you along with everyone else, but I'll go ahead and tell you now. Please don't tell anyone. I have won the Nobel Peace Prize.' He was as serious as a person can be."

As I said in the beginning, Robert Louis Borgstede was not a silly man. He was 73 years old. His mind was sharp. So his son was not sure about any of this. I return to the son's letter to the president.

"I could see that he was proud of himself and I did not want to deflate him. But I had to ask, 'How did you win the Nobel Prize?' He said a friend had sent him a newspaper clipping about another man who had received the prize and suggested he was also eligible. There was a website he could visit and through this website he learned that he qualified for the prize. I asked, 'Did it cost anything?' He answered, 'Yes, $115 plus shipping and handling.'"

It was, of course, something of a scam that dated to 1988, when the Nobel Peace Prize had been awarded to U.N. Peacekeeping Forces. Certain peacekeeping missions had been cited. Korea was not in the mix. But the people who were selling these replica medals had decided to target, or include, American veterans of Korea.

Robert Louis Borgstede made his announcement to the extended family that night, and everybody congratulated him. Upon returning home, his sons looked on the Internet and saw stories about the scam. Fortunately, this newspaper never ran such a story, and when Robert Louis Borgstede died last year, he died believing he had won the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Now his son has written a letter to the president, letting him know that if Robert Louis Borgstede were alive, he would join the rest of the family in offering congratulations and best wishes.