Al Robles, longtime manager of Sonoma’s Broadway Market, dies at 61

After four decades of being greeted by his beaming smile and welcoming ways, loyal Broadway Market shoppers, friends and family are mourning the passing of longtime store manager Al Robles.

Alfred Renaldo (Rey) Robles died on April 22 at his home in Schellville after a brief battle with cancer. He was 61.

During his senior year of high school, Robles began working at Broadway Market for owners Ron Rodgers and Dianne Gaudino, and he was a fixture at the store until the day of his diagnosis in January.

“The day that he heard the news from the doctor – that he had just months to live – Al stopped work determined to live every single day he had left to the fullest. And he did,” said longtime friend Eric Nyberg.

Robles was born in San Francisco on June 9, 1959. He lived in the Sunset District until he moved to Sonoma with his family in 1966. He graduated from Sonoma Valley High School in 1978.

In 1992 he married Lynda Lunn, a 1987 graduate of Sonoma Valley High School. Their daughter, Anna Robles, was born in 1995 and graduated from SVHS in 2013.

“For our entire life together, we sat down to dinner 360 days of the year to a meal that Al cooked for us,” said Lynda. “He took pride in being a great husband and a great dad. He was our world.”

His other world was Broadway Market.

“Dad really enjoyed the close-knit community of the market and the relationships he built with his local customers and vendors,” said Anna Robles. “He stopped to chat with friends everywhere he went in Sonoma and it always took us hours to try to leave a local event.”

One of Robles’s great joys was using the relationships he developed with vendors to get products donated for the Schell-Vista Fire Department summer chicken barbecue event and Sonoma Valley High School’s annual crab feed fundraiser.

Customer and friend Michelle Finn said that Robles was the face of Broadway Market for as long as she can remember.

“He was the smiling, energetic force behind it. [He] never stopped moving, never stopped creating, never stopped elevating ‘his’ little market,” she shared on a Sonoma Foodies Facebook post.

“He didn’t own the market. He just loved it, with all of his heart. The world just lost a big one,” she said.

On his LinkedIn bio, Robles described his job as “making sure that Broadway Market is a place that you always want to come back to.”

As a friend and neighbor for 40 years, Nyberg described Robles as “the most authentic person I’ve ever met,” a sentiment echoed by Nyberg’s wife Wendy. Both Eric and Wendy considered Robles to be their best friend but acknowledged that many other people would make the same claim.

“Al was the catalyst and the glue among his many friends,” said Eric Nyberg.

Every Friday at noon, Robles would leave work and meet up with friends for lunch on the Plaza at the Swiss Hotel.

“He was so funny, up until the very end,” said Eric Nyberg. “He was always smiling and laughing and making sure we were all happy.”

Nyberg said that in the 98 days from Robles’ diagnosis to his passing, he never once complained.

Robles’s passion outside of work was travel to Mexico. He organized frequent trips there with his friends and family.

“Around 19 months ago, Al announced he was going to retire on his birthday when he turned 62 and begin spending a few months every year living in Mexico,” said Nyberg.

Wendy Nyberg said that Robles was “always, always so full of life” that it is almost impossible to believe that he is gone.

Robles would have turned 62 in June.

Robles is survived by his siblings Rita Hardister, Joy Stopar (Daniel), Eddie Robles (Paula), Vince Robles, Gloria Garcia (John), Hilario Robles (Tiffany), as well as his many nieces and nephews. He also leaves behind his “father-in-love,” Broadway Market owner Ron Rodgers.

A private memorial for family and close friends took place on April 30.

Contact Lorna at lorna.sheridan@sonomanews.com.