Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 16, 1994 TAG: 9407080007
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Beth Macy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
No real reason I should drive out to his Bedford County ranch house, write down everything he says and then expect you to want to read about it.
He's just a nice old man with something to say. Quietly, without much fuss.
His ideas are as plain as the Underwood typewriter collecting dust in his kitchen, as comfortable as his old, sunken-in couch and the afghan that covers it:
Be nice. Work hard. Take care of your family. Be grateful for the good things.
Roy Robinson doesn't see enough of those tenets in the news he reads today. And he didn't see enough of them back in 1970, when he took it upon himself to become a quiet sage - jotting down ideas at stoplights on the way to his civil-service job, expanding upon them at his Underwood when he got home, and finally, editing them down to handy little sentences that could fit on the slip of a fortune cookie.
He spent 10 years working on his book of ``epigrams,'' he calls them, enough time to write, rewrite and rewrite again 365 sayings - one for each day of the year.
#197: In the search for happiness the real joy is helping others.
#300: Though we can not change our heredity we can change our environment.
#331: Quite often a low-key statement is heard over a shout.
``I'm not a real doer, I'm more of a dreamer,'' the 75-year-old says. ``At first, I wrote them just for the family. Then I wanted the whole world to know, but didn't know how to tell the whole world.''
He tried to interest book publishers, but no one was interested - too simple, too ordinary. He approached newspapers in and around Virginia Beach, where he lived before retiring here, but they told him the same thing: What's the angle? Where's the news?
An eighth-grade drop-out who worked his way up to an accounting position at the Naval base in Norfolk, Robinson is above all an optimist.
#334: There is no happiness without a trusting nature, even if we are betrayed from time to time.
Abandoned as a child by his father in the Depression and widowed by his wife, Lucie, Robinson helps his divorced daughter raise his two grandsons. His white hair blends in well among the fortysomething parents at soccer games and cross-country meets.
#199: Imitate the simplicity and trust of a child and your heart will be filled with happiness.
He keeps bees, plants flowers and vegetables and just created a water garden in his backyard. He doesn't feel quite right sitting at church anymore without his wife beside him.
He worries about war in North Korea, and he can't wait to read ``The Agenda,'' Bob Woodward's new book on the Clinton administration. He likes to engage in serious thinking, but doesn't let it depress him.
#34: To grumble about everything that is wrong without an effort to make things right is a complete waste.
``A person has to keep their mind active and interested,'' he says. ``You have to be involved in life all your life because if you become disinterested, you lose hope.''
He thinks a lot about where he would be today without Sidney Hirsch, the New York City produce man who gave him the Depression-era job that turned his life around. Robinson had been working for Western Union when Hirsch noticed how quickly he walked delivering telegrams - and doubled his salary to $25 a week.
#345: A willing person should be given the opportunity to prove themselves.
He reflects on his hard coming-of-age not with bitterness for what went wrong, but with thankfulness for what went right.
Hard work. Politeness. Compassion. Trust.
The naysayers were right: What the quiet sage of Bedford County has to say really isn't all that new or exciting.
That it should be is exactly Roy Robinson's point.
Beth Macy, a features department staff writer, returns to her weekly Thursday column schedule beginning today.
by CNB