Shawn Vestal: Toots Robinson led an ordinary, unforgettable life

The eulogy was over, but the stories about Toots Robinson were not nearly finished.

They kept erupting, unbidden, from the audience.

“Nobody could peel a potato cleaner than her,” one woman called out. A man told of the time Toots identified him by name before he had even knocked on her door – “She knew my steps!”

Others mentioned her marvelous rendition of Hansel and Gretel, complete with a witch voice, and the time she filled a bucket with oysters on the coast.

“Matching socks! Socks!” said another. “She could feel the socks … She was better at matching socks than I am.”

Toots was blind for all of her 92 years – from her log-cabin birth to her final years in Hillyard’s Dogtown – but in story after story at her memorial service this week, it was made clear: She did not like to be considered blind, she did not like to “act” blind or recognize limits, she did not even like it when other blind people wore black glasses or felt the faces of others. It bugged her that Ray Charles swayed his head when he sang, though it was not clear how she knew that he did. She did not want anyone’s pity for her condition – or even their acknowledgement.

“She didn’t want anyone to talk about her being blind,” said her sister-in-law, Dorothy Robinson, of Kettle Falls. “She was not blind. She could do anything anyone else could do.”

When it comes to Violet “Toots” Robinson, this is more than just a happy gloss or the sweep of positive sentiment that accompanies someone’s death. Her grit was hard-earned and her “pioneer spirit” came from actual pioneer experience. She lived an extraordinary ordinary life – she was not captain or president of anything, and yet the people who packed her memorial service Wednesday could not stop talking about her.

She was eulogized by her son, Bill Robinson, the man known as the Bloomsday vulture, at his company, Robinson Research.

Violet Greer was born in 1922 in a log house on Pontiac Ridge in north Okanogan County, very premature and without sight. She was always known as Toots – rhymes with boots – though no one’s sure why.

She had five siblings, including a brother, Charles, who was also born prematurely and blind. Their home stood 12 miles east of Chesaw and a few miles from the Canadian border; to this day, according to Bill, the home remains, without electricity, running water or phone service.

“To say that Toots and Charles grew up in extreme poverty and neglect is still an understatement,” he said in his eulogy. “I remember my mom and Charles speaking fondly of the time of year when ‘wild spinach’ was growing and included in their diet. What they knew as the delicacy ‘wild spinach’ was what we know as pigweed. They remembered a joyous occasion when they scrounged around and filled their empty bellies with lard spread on moldy bread, with a side dish of boiled pigweed.”

When she was about 8, a county agent visited their home and reported that the kids were not in school; soon they went to Chesaw on horseback for classes, where the teachers realized that neither Toots nor Charles could see.

Neither “had any recollection of any discussion or provisions made for their severe blindness before the surprise visit from the county agent,” Bill Robinson said.

They were sent to the state school for the blind in Vancouver; Charles struggled and was expelled, but Toots thrived – though she rarely saw her family. She spent Christmases in her dorm alone, and she was visited by a parent on three occasions, “including Charles’ expulsion and Toots’ graduation.”

She moved back to Pontiac Ridge, and she married Dave Robinson in 1948. They moved 16 times over the next nine years, often staying with relatives. She had a daughter, Ruth, in 1949, and son, Bill, in 1953. Two days after she gave birth to Bill by C-section, the family was on the way home from Deaconess Hospital when Dave spotted a deer while they were driving over Sherman Pass. Toots used to tell the story of how she sat on a log holding newborn Bill, while Dave field-dressed the deer he shot.

“He was just picking up a few groceries on the way home,” Bill said.

They moved to the part of Hillyard known as Dogtown. Dave held various jobs over the years, and liked to frequent the local bars. Bill said his dad “consumed oceans of beer” in the Hillyard taverns, and said that his mother’s quality of life often ebbed and flowed with his drinking.

Meanwhile, she lived a “remarkably full” life, Bill said. She sewed, crocheted, made quilts, canned food, read and wrote Braille, went camping and served as a den mother in Cub Scouts. She took in ironing and mending from the neighbors, and babysat the neighbor kids.

One night in the early 1970s, Dave and Toots were walking down a Hillyard alley when a young man tried to steal her purse. She hung on. He hit her in the face and kicked her in the stomach and dragged her into the middle of Market Street. Still, she hung on.

“Toots was a beaten, abraded, bloody mess,” Bill said, “but she never relinquished her purse.”

Toots and Dave took in Charles, her brother, in 1971. In 1984, Dave died after suffering two massive heart attacks at age 58, having managed to set aside enough money to make sure that his wife and her brother would be taken care of. For the most part Toots and Charles lived alone until the past few years – she had a sharp mind and memory, several friends and family members, and she liked to bet a few dollars on sports.

In 2004, she had a massive stroke. Her health deteriorated and her famously sharp mind began to weaken. “My mind doesn’t work for beans anymore,’” she would tell her son. Charles died last year; Toots had a hard time remembering that he was gone. She died, surrounded by her family, on her 92nd birthday.

“There were individual moments in which I felt sorry for our mom,” Bill said, “but in the big picture … she was never among the people for whom I felt pity.”