Delores Robinson

Raised outside Detroit, Michigan by foster parents, Delores (Del) was grateful her entire life for the love and skilled direction of her foster family. She fell for a handsome IBM employee, Thomas Edward Robinson (dec. 1979), who both at the age of 18 married, moved to Westland, Michigan, and began to build a family of eight. She grew in a circle of extended family and initially raised her own six children in their sturdy embrace. Following abandonment by her first husband, resulting in excommunication by the Catholic Church, Del moved to Crutchfield, Kentucky with her children and second husband in 1971. There she developed and kept for the remainder of her life a deep love for all things southern: farm animals, gardening, strawberry pickin’, pecan harvesting, “puttin’ up” corn, peas, okra, etc., hot summer nights, pounding spring rains, and far less winter than Detroit. Outside the home she worked at Henry I. Siegel stitching women’s bell bottom jeans. She cooked like nobody’s business, loved to bake and enjoyed the bounty of each. She was tenacious in the face of extreme violence, abandonment, estrangement, and poverty. She had a great head of thick black hair, dreamed of having her own salon, and was buoyant the day she finally got her first gray hair at 89. An extrovert, she loved to chat with anyone within earshot, made friends as often as the sun and moon rise and set, and found the deepest and kindest love of all in her final partner, Charlie Parker, (dec. 1990) She is survived by five of her six children, Thomas Robinson of Alamosa, Colorado, Theresa Bradley of Water Valley, Kentucky, Kathleen Robinson Weston of Lakewood, Colorado, Joseph Robinson of St. Louis, Missouri, James Robinson of Palmersville and John Robinson of North Carolina (dec. 2013); 11 grandchildren and their spouses; and 11 great-grandchildren. There will be a celebration of life at a future time. Usually at this point in the obituary there is the line “….in lieu of flowers…”. As there will be no immediate public gathering, the family suggests in lieu of flowers, draw your family closer, read poetry, take a walk in the woods, drink really good coffee, sleep all day on Saturday, offer an olive branch, stop drinking alcohol if it hurts you or others, and most of all, forgive the fracture of harsh words. Love and nature are the biggest gifts of all. Embrace them such that your own heart is wrenched open. National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233