Bartle found his first term the more enjoyable. Then he had carried into office virtually the entire Citizens Association ticket. During his second term, a block of councilmen stymied his plans. Although Bartle remained on the 1963 ticket, he asked voters not to reelect him. Bartle was a hail-fellow-well-met, who "never knew a stranger" and demonstrated an impressive recall of names. On Christmas, he would regularly spend the day visiting orphanages, the Boy's Home, the city jail, and other places that might be overlooked on such a holiday. For most of his life, Bartle lived simply, becoming more expansive in his personal spending only after being elected mayor. (His greatest extravagance until that point was fine cigars, of which he smoked 25 per day.) Bartle idolized his clergyman father and displayed some guilt for not having followed in his profession. Bartle continued to make major decisions only after deciding what his father would have done in a similar circumstance. But Roe Bartle hated the penury of the clergyman's life. The first time he asked a girl for a date, she rejected him because he was dressed in ill-fitting, second-hand clothes. Crushed, he swore before a mirror, "hand upraised", that no child of his would ever know poverty. But once he had the money, he also acquired expensive hand-tailored suits. "Kansas City Star" editor Roy A. Roberts was puzzled by Bartle, "You can say almost anything you like about Roe Bartle—call him demagogue, opportunist, tycoon or dedicated saint—and you will be correct, but you will speak only half truths. Nobody knows Bartle. He is too complex to be figured out." In later years, Bartle was plagued by health problems including phlebitis and injuries to his back and legs caused by a 1944 plane crash. Bartle died on May 9, 1974, from complications of diabetes and heart disease. He was buried in Forest Hill Cemetery. The Kansas City Convention Center, opened in 1976, was named Bartle Hall in his honor, and Bartle's wife and friends provided items for exhibit cases that there memorialize his life. Bartle's papers are in the State Historical Society of Missouri.