t~\“*

9

Passing On

ust as the September issue of

OITM hit the streets, I got a call
to huny back to New Hampshire:
my dad was dying and wouldn't last
the night. I all but flew down the
Interstate and got to the hospital at
9:30 that night. He died at 10
o'clock.

At 10:45 I called in his
obituary — he'd written it himself a
few years ago — to the daily news-
paper where he had worked as a
reporter and editor for over 30
years. It was his last written contri-
bution, the “-30-" (old fashioned
newspaper—speak for "the end") to
his last 15 years of weekly columns,
right up until two weeks beforehe
died.

George Robinson, my
dad, came into my life when I was
about 9. A mutual friend had intro-
duced him to my mother, a bright,
forceful, no-nonsense woman strug-
gling to support three children from
a failed marriage on clerk-typist
wages at the Navy Yard. George
was four years older than she, a
bright, low-key, always anxious
reporter at the daily newspaper,
supporting and living with his emo-
tionally defeated mother. “We struck
a deal," his friends quote him, "and I
got the best part of it."

He worked hard, wrote
well, won some newswriting
awards, was promoted to city editor
in 1964. He loved the rough and
tumble of politics. He wasn't elegant
or smooth, and he wasn't
impressed with position or power.
He was fair. He cared about issues
and about making government work
for people, from getting potholes
filled to presidential campaigns. He
treated people — including me —
with respect, even when he thought
their opinions were "BS."

We had three different
newspapers - the Boston Globe,
the right-wing reactionary
Manchester (NH) Union Leader
(because it was always a good idea
to see what the opposition/competi-
tion was up to), and the Portsmouth
Herald, his own paper — in the
house every day except Sunday,
when we had two.

When I was in high school
- middle of the Vietnam War — we
argued over the TV news four or
five times a week. Any time Lyndon
Johnson or Hubert Humphrey
appeared on the screen — or later
Richard Nixon - I'd snort with dis-

 

  itorial

gust. He'd call me on it, refusing to
let me write off these men simply as
war-mongers and bigots without
knowing their history. Well, not
Nixon. George told me a little about
Johnson and Humphrey and how
together they had worked to pass
legislation establishing civil and vot-
ing rights for black Americans, and
medicare, and endorsed the nuclear
test ban treaty. He took the time to
challenge my adolescent absolutist
thinking, and he did it in a way that
didn't belittle or shame me. He
clearly enjoyed debating with me,
and he respected my intelligence.

One of my best George
stories is about my high school
graduation in 1970. Portsmouth was
even more of a military town then,
with a (still existing) Navy nuclear
submarine base employing nearly
7,000 people on thenorthern end
and a Strategic Air Command B-52
bomber base (now a public
airport/tradeport) on the southern
end.

Most of my graduating
class, and certainly all oftheir par-
ents, were shocked — shocked —
when I alone of the 365 seniors
wore a simple black annband with a
white peace symbol on it on my '
white graduation robe. It was before
Watergate, just after the National
Guard of Ohio killed four students
at a peaceful antiwar protest at
Kent State University, and two more
unarmed students — one a high
school kid walking by — were shot
by police at Jackson State in
Mississippi.

I rushed home after the
ceremony, hoping to get out to a
party before George and my mother
got back and took issue with my
method of conveying my opinion. I
didn't — quite — make it. The family
Dodge rolled into the driveway as I
hurried down the front walk.

“Waitjust a minute,"
George called out as he leaped
from the car. I froze, expecting the
worst. “I want to shake your hand,"
he said, striding over the patch of
grass between us. Huh? "What you
did took a lot of guts." Then he
shook my hand and walked up the
steps and into the house.

That's the kind of guy
George was.

‘ He also, for 26 years, got
up early and made breakfast for my
mother every day, calling her when
it was ready. A couple of times a

week he put dinner in the oven
before going to pick up my mother
at the bus. Totally unhandy with

tools — except a typewriter, the keys

of which he pounded so hard that
his fingers were like iron spikes —
there was nothing macho about

him.

bian to him and to my mother in
1975, their response was atypical
for the time: “Oh," they said, “we've
known that for years. We're sorry
you worried about telling us.”

But he was no paragon.

He smoked (although he quit before

I did), and he drank (three days
before he died, he said, “The only
drug I ever got into was booze."),
and he avoided any kind of emo-
tional conflict within our family,
much to our detriment.

After George retired from
the newspaper, he was elected to
the school board. He served on a

committee awarding scholarships to

bright "at-risk" kids and on the

library building committee. He cared

passionately about a skittish aban-
doned cat he'd adopted from the
streets of Manhattan.

The last few years weren't

kind. His health wasn't great and
he'd had a few surgeries. Last win-
ter he'd surrendered his driver's
license after a sideswipe accident.
He was tired of feeling crummy and
couldn't get out to see people —
he'd never liked cabs and wouldn't
impose on friends.

So when he finally heard
his doctor say he had a six-month
prognosis, George was relieved.
Then he set about dying with the
single-minded purposefulness he'd
always brought to writing news sto-
ries. It took him only a week.

His friends and former col-

leagues, retired themselves now,

have been writing remembrances of

George, about how he taught them
by example, about his fairness, his
wry, self-deprecating humor, the
unfailing social liberalism reflected
in his columns. He would have
been embarrassed to read what he

would have called “sentimental bull-

shit."

But I'm glad they're not
embarrassed to write how they felt
about George. I think he was
pleased that I had become a news-
paper editor — he bragged about it
to friends who visited him at the
hospital. A lot of what I know about
what I do at O/TM came from
watching what he did.

I'll miss him. V

 

Fannie Flagg’s New
“Rainbow”

Fannie Flagg’s New “Rainbow”
Author Fannie Flagg has a new book
out, Standing in the Rainbow. Flagg,
the author of Fried Green Tomatoes at
the Whistle Stop Cafe’, has written a
sprawling gently comic novel (495
pages) of small town Missouri life
covering the years from I946, when,
she said in an interview on WAMC
radio, “everything seemed possible
and hopeful for a child,” to the pres-
ent.

Yup, there’s a gay character,
an undertaker, no less, who becomes
chief of protocol for the populist gov-
ernor whose campaign he funded. -
Now there’s a great fit! But, from the
review, that’s not what the title rain-
bow refers to — more like “somewhere
over the ...” ‘

F lagg, bom Patricia Neal,
tried six times to win the title of Miss
Alabama (and was successful on the
sixth try), wrote — and acted — for the
original Candid Camera TV show,
was in a number of movies (5 Easy
Pieces, Grease) and was Barbara
Eden’s sidekick on the short-lived sit-
com Harper Vizlley PTA. She must be
doing okay — commanding between
$10,000 and $20,000 per speaking
engagement. Fannie Flagg turned 58
last month on the 21st.

“New” Civil Unions Expert

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC)
has announced their acquisition of the
services of Vennont’s own Civil
Union maven Beth Robinson.
Robinson has joined HRC
FamilyNet’s “Ask the experts” depart-
ment. Robinson is co-founder of the
Vermont Freedom to Marry Task
Force, and she was co-counsel in
Baker v. State, the groundbreaking
court case that led to Vermont's civil
union law. Congratulations to both
parties. Check out the questions and
answers at
www.hrc.org/familynet/chapter.asp?ch
apter=l54#robinson V

When I came out as a les-