Shortly after graduating from good ole’ PHS, I married my high school sweetheart,
L. E. Robinson (class of ’54) More of you will remember him than me. I was working at Texas Electric Service Co. and L. E. was a summer hire at General Dynamics, intending to return to T.C.U. in the fall. But as luck would have it, I was pregnant before the summer was over and he stayed on at G.D. for the next 36 years, other than a brief layoff during the 1970’s aerospace recession.
Over the next five years we had two more children and I thoroughly enjoyed being a stay-at-home mom, doing all the usual things – except staying home-until 1972 when L. E. lost his job at G.D. I had always intended to go back to work fulltime using the secretarial skills learned in Mrs. Burden’s typing and Mrs. Lightfoot’s shorthand classes once my kids got older. For several years I had been working part time for Bill Hawkins’ (class of ’54) company and substituting as a secretary with the Fort Worth public schools. I was in the right place at the right time when Charles Franklin needed a secretary at Daggett Elementary School. I had gone to junior high at Daggett, so this was like a homecoming for me. After several years at Daggett, I moved to the Personnel Dept. of the administration building. It was there that I first started taking off-campus classes at Tarrant County Jr. College.
Leaving the F.W.I.S.D. in 1978, I went on to a series of more interesting (and lucrative) secretarial positions at Bell Helicopter, and Leonard Resources (Remember Leonard Brothers Dept. store?) I even worked a short time for singer B. J. Thomas (“Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”) at his home in Arlington. During these years I continued to take classes at T.C.J.C. After nine years I finally earned my Associates Degree as a Legal Assistant. (I couldn’t decide what I wanted to be when I grew up, just knew I did not want to be a secretary the rest of my life.)
After working three years as a legal assistant, to attorney Kathryn Lansford, I passed the Certified Legal Assistant exam to become a C.L.A. I then began working as a contract Paralegal for a large law firm in Dallas that was “taking down” Savings and Loan Associations. From there I got on with the Legal Liability section of the F.D.I. C.
In the meantime, L. E. had retired from General Dynamics and was looking for land on which to build our retirement home. We found same acreage in the Lost Pines of Bastrop, 30 miles southeast of Austin and he dragged me kicking and screaming away from my beloved Fort Worth. I had never lived anywhere else in my whole life, nor had I wanted to. I may live in Bastrop, but I’m still from Fort Worth!
I finally got fed up with family law in Bastrop, and retired in 2001. Since that time I’ve kept busy with church work and other volunteerism as well as taking a cruise to Alaska and going to Italy with my daughter and granddaughter. I play bridge regularly. I also started a Red Hat Society in Bastrop, “The Bodacious Bastop Belles”. This is a dis-organization for women over the age of 50, who meet monthly for lunch and just have a good time. The only requirement for membership is that one must be willing to appear in public wearing a purple outfit with a red hat. If any of you ladies are interested, check out the national website www.redhatsociety.org for the location of a chapter near you or info on starting your own. This has really filled a void in mature women’s lives, as in five years the Red Hat Society has grown from one club in California to over 4,000 chapters worldwide.
‘Nough about me. My children are my greatest accomplishment. Our oldest son, Rob, graduated from Arizona State with a Ph.D. in Latin History and married a girl from Brazil last summer. They live in Austin where he teaches at Austin Community College. Our daughter, Shari, teaches junior English at Fort Worth Christian School. She has two daughters. Christina, a Texas A & M graduate, is teaching at Mesquite High School and is getting married this June. Stacy is a junior at Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas. Our youngest, Dr. Scott Robinson, has one daughter age 12, Rhiannon. He and his wife, Kathie, are restoring an old home in Gainesville, where he is Program Coordinator of Art over the three campuses of North Central Texas College.
Looking forward to renewing old acquaintances at our 50th Reunion. I’d especially love to hear from anyone who attended George Clark Elementary and/or Daggett Jr. High.