CHRISTIE ROBINSON TRIBUTE

July 9, 2023

By Larry Carlin

At the end of one’s life it is sometimes hard to know where to begin to talk about him or her. It’s also challenging for me to get over the fact that Christie is no longer with us. Even though she was diagnosed with stage-four ovarian cancer in November of 2017 and the longtime prognosis was not good, I still wasn’t ready for her to be gone so soon. Writing and talking about her in the past tense has not been easy, even though she has been gone for over two months now.

In the overall scheme of things, I did not know her as long as many of her friends. While we both attended Upper Merion Junior and Senior High Schools together, there were 450 some people in our graduating class, and our paths never crossed back in the day. I knew who she was, but we had never officially met. It wasn’t until the 40-year class reunion in 2012 that we first spoke. As one of the organizers of the event, I was going around taking photos on my iPhone and trying to personally greet everyone. I don’t recall what was said, but it probably wasn’t much more than, “Nice to see you, thanks for coming.”

A few days after the reunion I started going through the list of attendees to see who was on Facebook, and when I looked at Christie’s page, there were three things that caught my attention right away that made me want to be her friend. On her bio page it said that she was a vegetarian as well as a proud liberal. But the main thing that caught my eye, though, was her profile photo. Was it a pic of her wonderful smile and amazingly curly hair? No. It was photo of her cat, Waldo! I knew instantly that we could become friends, so I sent her a friend request, and the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

If my memory serves me well, she, her brother Alan, and her parents, Kermit and Margaret, moved to King of Prussia from Michigan around 1964, and they settled into the Gulph Mills area down by the Hanging Rock. I believe she went to the Gulph Elementary School for one year, and then did sixth grade at Roberts, before then going to Upper Merion Junior High. In high school, along with the usual curriculum, she took many drama classes, and then she majored in same at Washington College, a liberal arts school in Chestertown, Maryland. I don’t know much about the years after college from 1976 through 2012, other than she didn’t pursue a career in theatre. She did study for a bit to become a speech pathologist, but then decided that she did not want to do this. And she worked for a brief while for manufacturer of bridal wear. At some point, however, went to work for her father’s Fugazy International Travel in Wayne, where she stayed for a couple of decades before it was sold in 2007 and became known as Main Line Vacations. Her former boss, Craig Martin, kept Christie on as a travel advisor and assistant when he bought the company.  

I do know that Christie liked her job and that she got to travel all over the world. She became good friends with some of her clients and while I had met memorial hosts Joe and Donnamarie Caprara four years ago at Christie’s surprise 65th birthday party that I sprung on her, I had not met Craig and his wife Sharon until today. Christie often spoke fondly of all these folks.

When I connected with her at the reunion, she was living in an old farmhouse in a beautiful setting out in Chester Springs. I think that she was there for about 20 years until having to relocate to an apartment in Exton in the summer of 2017 after the farm was sold.

Shortly after we became friends in 2012, we started texting to one another, mostly about politics, the Phillies and Eagles, and cats. Lots and lots of cat cartoons and photos. In later years we corresponded by text almost daily, yet we seldom ever spoke on the phone or wrote emails. I still have a text thread on my phone that goes back about four years. Sadly, there was another thread that dated back to 2012 (that also took up most of my memory on my iPhone), but I accidentally deleted it before starting the newer one.

When I would go back to visit PA during the summers and occasionally in the fall, Christie and I would usually get together for dinner and a beer somewhere, or I would pick up some cheese hoagies at Wawa and go over to her apartment to watch the Phillies game. On some visits – when she came back with me – my wife Claudia would join us. The two of them also became good friends while striking up a texting relationship. And Christie was a huge help with Claudia when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had surgery in November of 2021.

As far as I know, Christie lived alone for most – if not all – of her adult life. And, she could sometimes be a bit stubborn. If there was some project that needed to get done, it often wasn’t completed until the last minute. Her 11th-hour move in 2017 is but one example. She also had a foolish fear of dentists. She hadn’t gone to one in many years. Sometime back, when she was having an issue with a tooth, I arranged for her to see a classmate dentist even though he wasn’t taking on any new patients. However, she never followed through with an appointment.

But boy, did she ever love her animals! While I never met any of her dogs that she’d had over the years, I did see photos and heard some great stories. Along about 20 years ago, when she was dog-less, she came across her black and white kitty Waldo, and she seamlessly segued from canines to felines. Two years ago in May, Claudia and I adopted two kitten sister rescues, and of course I began sending Aunt Christie photos multiple times each week. Sadly, around this time in June or July of 2021, Waldo began having issues and had to be put down. But about a month later – and, I believe, inspired by our situation with our two girls – Christie went to look at some rescues and fell in love with her black darling siblings Bria and Bentley, and by the time they turned eight-weeks-old, they had themselves a new mommy. They brought so much love and joy to her along the way, and they were all so lucky to have a year and a half together.

Christie and I had a special relationship. We connected on many levels, mostly like a brother and sister. She wasn’t close to her own brother Alan, so I think she was glad to have me in her life even though I was 3,000 miles away. If nothing else, I was often sometimes just minutes away by text. I have occasionally thought about what might have happened had we ever connected back in high school. Maybe nothing. Or maybe we might have hooked up, gotten married, raised a family, and recently celebrated 50 years together. When I jokingly suggested this to her once, she replied in her own Christie way, “Yeah, we probably would have been divorced years ago and only be corresponding via attorneys now.”

It’s kind of funny how people can change over time. In 1972, the year we graduated, I was more of a loner back then. Short of playing intramural basketball, I wasn’t part of any clubs, I didn’t take any music or drama classes, and I didn’t have anything to brag about in the back of our yearbook. Christie, on the other hand, was outgoing, was involved in plays, she was the president of the class thespian society for two years, she was on the student council in our senior year, and in the back of the yearbook she wrote more than any other classmate. Yet after college she turned a bit inward while I went on to perform music on stages for the next five decades and I also studied acting for a few years while getting some bit parts in industrial films and music videos.

In the slideshow tribute that I made for her after her passing (which can be viewed here), the line from the song by writer Randy VanWarmer that really rings true is, “Sometimes it makes me sad that we never said goodbye.” But I have to take issue with the next line – which is also the title – that goes, “Well I guess it never hurts to hurt sometimes.” In this case, I would trade the word “never” to “always.”

I arrived back here in PA four days ago for the first time since last July, which was also the last time that I saw her. She came to our 50-year class reunion. Even though I never asked for her help in arranging my travel plans, like a good travel advisor she always wanted me to text her when I arrived in Philly so that she knew I’d done so safely. Soon after landing, I would shoot her a short note. And I wanted to send her a text last Wednesday saying hello and that all was good. Instead, I was coming back to say goodbye to her, forever.

The last few weeks of her life were tough, not only for her, but for everyone else around her. Me, being so far away, I felt helpless and useless. But there was nothing that anyone could do. She was losing her battle with the dreaded disease. I know that Donnamarie and Christie’s veterinarian friend Debbie Becker were there for her almost daily, even when there would be little response from her in the final weeks. Even though I tried, I knew that texting was futile because Christie was barely alert. I even called and left some voicemails, not really expecting to get a reply. At the least I was hoping that she would pick up once so that I could tell her that she was loved by me, her kitties, and all her friends.

Christie may be physically gone, but her spirit lives on, and will continue to do so. Besides getting to know many of her friends as the result of her passing, I have to relate another connection. Over the years she would occasionally mention a college drama friend of hers named Davo Knepler, who lives about 15 miles away from me in Northern California. She said to me that she would try to let Davo know where I am performing sometime so that we could meet. This, unfortunately, had never happened until after she passed away. I reached out to him via Facebook to let him know that she had made her final curtain call. Of course, he was very saddened by the news. As luck would have it, my trio was scheduled to play at a farmer’s market on May 6th, and Davo and his wife Karen came to see us. Since then we had a wonderful lunch together on June 24th, and then Claudia and I went out to their house on July 4th for a holiday barbecue, which was really nice. I know that Christie would be ecstatic to know that four friends of hers have finally connected because of her.

One final story. Later in the day on May 2nd, after the sad news arrived that Christie had crossed over to rejoin her parents Margaret and Kermit, I was collecting some photos of her that were on my computer so that I could make the slideshow. But one of the pictures froze up my laptop as I was trying to close it down. It was the one with her big smile and curly hair while she is waving to the camera. Since the photo wouldn’t go away, I had to do a hard shutdown so that I could turn off the device. The next day, when I returned to work, when I fired up the computer the first thing that I saw on the screen – and I kid you not – was that same photo of her smiling and waving. I guess she just wanted to say goodbye in her own dramatic Christie way. Or, as Davo said at that time, “She is still in between worlds, wanting you to know she’s okay, that it’s okay”…

In her posting in the back of the high school yearbook, she wrote “to be happy as I want everyone else to be; to be a better person and make my life worthwhile; to be loved by more people; to pursue a career in acting.” Well, three out of four ain’t bad!

In closing, my dear Christie, the first two lines in the chorus of the song mentioned above say it all:

Oh, you’re always in my heart, you’re often on my mind

I will never let it die, just as long as I’m alive