THANK YOU JIM!

The Spectator--Jim Bennett--Sept. 13, 2007

GOD BLESS YOU PLEASE, JUDY ROBINSON

TIMES LIKE THESE, I depend on the poets. Whether they be from popular culture or tucked away in the sacred tomes of “serious” literature.

Her obituary left out a lot of important stuff, but isn’t that how obituaries behave? These teeny-tiny biographies give us a few facts and the names of lots of relatives, but that’s about all we can expect. The gaps are enormous, not just for Judy Robinson but everybody.

Before there was an obituary in any newspaper, there was the internet. “Another classmate lost,” was the subject heading in my e-mail box. The Bloomington High School class of ‘60 list serves were all over Judy’s death at least two days before the August 30 death notice in The Pantagraph and other newspapers.

It’s discouraging how at my age, the word another usually appears before death, but time has a habit of marching on, and I doubt if that’s going to change.

Her obituary said, “Judy Robinson (Ellington) died August 26, 2007, at the Brunswick, Georgia, hospital....Judy was born in Bloomington on June 27, 1942, daughter of Al and Jeanne Robinson.”

It also reported, “She attended Bloomington High School and Illinois State University.” Not good enough. Substitute the word graduated for attended.

I reread the obituary several times, with some disbelief and a sadness that seemed a bit disproportionate. I hadn’t seen Judy in more than 45 years, but I had a still-vivid, living memory. I clipped the article and put it on my desk.

I didn’t need my 1960 yearbook for most of this, but I scrounged it out anyway. Judy was a member of the homecoming court senior year. She was a member of the swim team, Latin Club (yes, they still had those back then) and held the starring role in school plays, including the senior class play, Stardust. She could fill out a leading role as well as a swim suit.

In short, Judy Robinson was cool. Or, as the kids say nowadays, way cool. And I was decidedly not. Or, as the kids say nowadays, so not. Her brief message, on the inside cover of my yearbook says, “Stay as sweet as you are. I had fun that Saturday night!” The blue ink seems as fresh as if the message had been written yesterday.


“AND INDEED there will be time/ To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’/ Time to turn back and descend the stair,”

It was April of 1960, and I was telling my friend Terry of my audacious plan. “Are you crazy?” he asked me. “No wait, don’t answer that. If you’re even thinking of asking her out, you are crazy. Why set yourself up?”

Of course he was right. I might have been a senior, but I was a rail-thin and clumsy one who wrote articles for the school newspaper, and who had been cut from the baseball team. She was a teenage Helen of Troy while I had all the social poise of an artichoke.

“Where did you get this idea in the first place?” Terry asked.

“In history class,” I said. “She sits just in front of me.”

“I know where she sits. But you taking out Judy Robinson, you see how nuts that sounds? Girls like her don’t go out with guys like us. How long have you been toying with this idea?”

“A week,” I said. “Maybe two weeks...maybe six weeks. Six weeks I’d say. Let’s just say a long time.”

I did it anyway. I decided I would “disturb the universe.” I don’t know to this day where I ever found the nerve. I made my maladroit move in the school library, where I was sitting at a table about four over from where she was sitting. She was alone; that didn’t happen often. I worried a rubber band close to death, but the clock said the bell would ring in five minutes. It was time. “Do I dare/ And do I dare?”

I walked over on shaky legs and sat down next to her. She smiled, and said, “Hi, Jim.” With a mouth full of cotton, I asked her for the history homework assignment. I already knew it, but you’ve got to start somewhere.

Then I said, “Judy, I was just wondering....I was just wondering, you know....there’s an Elvis Presley movie down at the Castle on Saturday and I was just wondering if you’d like to go see it with me. You know, If you weren’t doing anything else I mean, and if you didn’t mind....I was just wondering.”

I was out of breath and out there now. The moment of truth was upon me.

When with her radiant smile she said, “That sounds like fun.”

That was yes. Even I could comprehend that much. At that moment my belief in God was unequivocal, even if I was too breathless to speak. “What time does it start?” she asked, and I assume I was able to tell her because I had looked it up in advance.

So I guess it was Browning trumping Eliot: “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp/ Or what’s a heaven for?”


IN THE DAYS that followed, I told everyone with whom I came in contact about my date with Judy Robinson, no matter the thrust of the conversation. Our neighbor complained about his crabgrass; I replied by telling him about my date with her. He scratched his head and made a face; he didn’t know who Judy was. He probably hadn’t been inside a high school in thirty years.

Saturday night came and I picked her20up at her house, driving the family car, a Buick Skylark. We went to the movie, then to Casella’s Pizza Palace on South Main Street. At that point in my life I didn’t even like pizza, but I wanted as many people as possible to see the two of us together. And Casella’s was where teens congregated in large numbers.

I made no attempt to hold her hand, much less kiss her. It would be downright foolish to push my luck. I don’t think it was ever a comfortable date; she was Judy Robinson, and I was still just....Bennett.

I’m sure I must have searched for things to say that might impress her. I may have even written them down. I remember how, in gentle nuances of body language and tone of voice, she signaled this date was to be a one-time-only event. The onset of a romance was no way imminent.

There was nothing patronizing in it though. I may have thought at the time she was acting out of charity, but Terry had another theory. “Maybe she wanted to get to know you a little better,” he suggested.

“It’s a thought.”

“It’s probably the right thought. She doesn’t know you very well, and for some reason wanted to spend a little time with you. Maybe she even saw a quality in you that’s worthy. She’s got brains too, not just beauty.”

“What quality would that be?” I asked.

“I have no idea.”

EVEN IF Judy’s acceptance of my fumbling invitation was indulgent, it was also kind and merciful. And we all know the quality of mercy is not strained.

Between those days and 2007, Judy located some exotic landscape. Her obituary says, “Judy and husband Tom [Ellington] transferred to Japan with the Hoover Company. During the four years they lived in Japan, Judy learned to speak Japanese and consulted to Credit Bank, translating bank articles into English for world publication.

“After spending two years in India, she and Tom returned to the states, spending the last 18 years on St. Simons Island, where Judy expanded her love of art as a licensed art appraiser for Left Bank Art Gallery. Most recently, she was owner of Ellington Art Appraisal Services.”

That’s some pretty cosmopolitan stuff right there. I imagine many of her friends and associates in those far-off lands will cherish lasting memories of her. But they won’t be any better than mine.

We all touch countless lives in ways we never know. “I had fun that Saturday night.” Judy Robinson, rest in peace.

comments or questions? jwbnnt@aol.com