Robinson to lead Kiwanis parade

The umpteenth plus one annual Kiwanis Christmas Parade rolls this Saturday at 10:00 a.m. from the First Baptist Church parking lot on Louisa Street. No one knows exactly how many parades the Kiwanis Club has sponsored but last year someone said it was the umpteenth so it was easy to arrive at the exact number this year.
The parade will follow its usual route going north on Louisa Street almost to the railroad tracks making a left on Benedette and another left on Julia back to the church.
Adding stature and prestige to this year’s parade is the Grand Marshall, Mrs. Lucy Robinson, long time resident of Richland Parish and Rayville. Well, I would not say a long time for she did not come here until 1919. She was one at the time, being born in Coushatta, La., on Christmas Day in 1918. This Christmas, for those of you good in math, she will have experienced a century of Christmases less two. She lived about seven miles south of Delhi and went to Central School [long since closed]. The principal of that school was later to become General Claire Chennault.
She lived through the ’27 flood and the depression years and graduated from high school at sixteen and from Normal State College (later Northwestern) at nineteen. If you are counting, that’s three years!
An honor student, she had no trouble getting job offers for teaching and was pondering whether to take the one that paid eighty dollars a month or the one that paid ninety.
Before she could accept the Agricultural Adjustment Act was passed. The goal of the Act was to assist in getting homesteads for anyone wanting to become a farmer. She was to be an assistant home supervisor at the unheard price of one-hundred and five dollars a month. So she set in helping ladies become home-makers. She taught them how to quilt, to raise a garden, to preserve what they raised, keep records and she never enjoyed anything more than that for she was good at it and what she was doing was so meaningful and the people were so appreciative.
But there was one dark, foreboding cloud over this little bit of Eden. She was warned before she took the job. The man in charge is a tyrant and mean spirited; do not cross him. She was afraid of him and gave him due room but when she was promoted to supervisor they were required to work closer together. She stood it for four years (‘38-‘42) but couldn’t take it any longer so on October 8, 1942, she married Douglas Robinson, Jr. and it did worlds for his temperament. They remained married until his demise in 1970.
They agreed on one thing, to have their children closer in age than they had experienced growing up. They wanted to have three like popcorn popping. And they did, Douglas III in ‘43, Lucy Ann in ‘44, and Michael Dupree in ‘46 and don’t you know it when you think you are through popping there is always a little pop at the end and it came in the form of Dorothy Ellen in 1947. That’s four children in 37 months. I am not sure that popcorn pops that fast. Where is Guinness now that we need him?
She gave up her job when Doug was born and later went back to work with the Welfare Department in Bastrop. After about a year she transferred to back Rayville where she worked for twenty-four years (1960-84).
Even with all these kids a running round, she found time to give unselfishly to her community. She was an active member of Rayville’s leading ladies club, Lambda Kappa, serving as president on two different occasions, served on the board of directors of Rhymes Memorial Library (now on the National Registry of Historic places) not to mention the hours she had donated to her church in almost all aspects of its organization: serving on committees, teaching Sunday school (more years than Kiwanis has sponsored parades) and the Baptist Training Union, food for special occasions, Saints Alive. You name it she’s done it. Enjoy the parade.