Mary R. Robinson died peacefully before dawn on February 15, at Canterbury Court in Atlanta. She was 103, just three weeks short of turning 104. She was a shy, almost timid woman, a persona that belied her generosity, a lifelong sense of adventure, thirst for knowledge, and devotion to her family.
Mary Ray was born on March 16, 1916, in Adairsville, Georgia, to Thomas Neal and Hypatia Bowdoin Ray. But she spent her childhood in tiny Norwood, Georgia, one hundred miles east of Atlanta, raised in a rambling farmhouse about a half-mile from the town. Mary came from a family of learners: her grandfather, Joseph Bowdoin, was a prominent Georgia physician and state medical director; her father was a highly respected farmer and banker in Norwood; and her brother Jack went to law school and would rise to prominence as a banker, farmer, a leader in the Georgia General Assembly, and as state treasurer.
So it probably surprised no one that after high school, Mary matriculated in 1933 at Wesleyan College in Macon. After two years, she transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She graduated from Chapel Hill in 1937 with a Bachelor of Arts and then continued on to what is now the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Graduate School of Public Health in Maryland to pursue a PhD in parasitology.
Late in her studies, on the recommendation of a professor, she returned to Georgia to run a lab for the US Army at Fort McPherson, conducting malaria research. It was there that a young tech named Ralph Lee Robinson caught her eye. Ralph Robinson and Mary Ray would wed soon afterwards at All Saints Episcopal Church in Atlanta, and he would go on to become a well-known and beloved pediatrician in the city. For the rest of his life, Dr. Robinson would proudly tell family and friends, “I went to work for Mary at Fort McPherson and I’ve been working for her ever since.” Dr. Robinson passed away in 1986, with Mary at his side, holding his hand.
Mary never did pursue her promising career in the biosciences, but her enduring love of adventure, travel, and learning never ceased. She needed zero cajoling to pack a suitcase and go somewhere, with or without planning. Once in Europe, she and a friend found themselves in the French countryside without a place to stay and night closing in fast. No problem. They simply knocked on the door of a farmhouse and somehow—perhaps through pantomime and butchered French—they were given a bed for the night in a stranger’s home. On another trip, this one high in the Southwest Colorado mountains in winter, her vehicle met an unforgiving four-foot snow bank and they were stranded. She was nearly eighty years old, but remained unfazed, as if this sort of occurrence happened every day, even though they were eight miles from the nearest paved road. Eventually, the traveling party was rescued by someone nearby, who took them in for the night. For years, she would treat the extended family to weeklong beach trips and she loved awakening at dawn to take long walks along the Atlantic coastal sand with whoever was stumbling around at that hour.
But perhaps the best example of Mary’s wanderlust came later in life. She had been diagnosed with colin cancer and was going in for chemo treatments. Unfortunately, she had also booked passage with friends on the Queen Elizabeth II. Unable to schedule both the chemo that would save her life or the ocean journey that would raise her spirits, her decision was easy—there was no way she was missing her boat ride. She never did return for any more chemo and lived another quarter century.
Mary was a voracious reader and generous to the extreme with her three children and five grandchildren. It would be a stretch to call her excitable—her strongest exclamations ran to “darn” and “you old so and so”—but make no mistake, she delighted in family and friends and she was a pretty sharp bridge player. For decades, she volunteered extensively at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Philip, where she chaired the committee that launched the annual antique fair. Mary was also chairwoman of the Lovett School Mother’s Club, the predecessor to the Lovett Parent Association.
When she moved to Canterbury Court at age eighty-nine (and still driving), she continued her volunteer work, making the rounds of the nursing wing, providing comfort and tender words to those in need. Among them were friends of hers, whom she outlived one by one.
Unsurprisingly, even when she had churned past one hundred years, she was still anxious to travel and needed no persuading to be rolled out into the beautiful gardens behind Canterbury Court, a blanket draped over her knees, pointing out trees or shrubs along the way. If upon returning to the building, the doors were locked, she didn’t fret, as if to say, “This is nothing; let me tell you about the time in France . . . ”
According to state census figures, Mary at her death was one of fewer than five hundred people in Georgia over the age of 103. But to those who knew her, she was one in a million.
She is survived by her three children, Ellen Robinson, Rebecca Robinson, and Ralph Robinson; five grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.
Her memorial service is on Sunday, February 23, at 2 p.m. at Canterbury Court, 3750 Peachtree Road, NE, Atlanta. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Emmaus House, 1017 Hank Aaron Drive, SW, Atlanta, GA, 30315 or the Canterbury Court Residents Council Scholarship Fund at 3750 Peachtree Road NE, Atlanta, GA 30319.
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