Leya Robinson had the ultimate respect for all people and had an innate ability to go beyond the surface to see an individual for his or her true self.
“She had this ability to … just go eyeball to eyeball and person to person with someone,” said friend and former colleague Joy Joyce. “When it came to people, she had the ultimate respect for all people. She was smart enough and savvy enough to know that something that appeared on surface may not be the only explanation for the event. What appeared to be the truth may not be the truth.”
Her approach to life guided her personally and professionally. As a former teacher and assistant dean at Willowbrook High School in Villa Park, she both commanded and gave respect.
“She was the kind of person everyone looked up to,” said Robert Fritz, head of the art department at the high school and Mrs. Robinson’s neighbor. “She could command a class whether it was filled with senior football players or freshmen. In a moment this little Jewish lady would have their attention. … You could tell she had power.”
Mrs. Robinson, 97, of York Center Co-op near Lombard, died Friday, Sept. 16, of pancreatitis in Elmhurst Memorial Hospital.
Her parents, both Jewish immigrants from Russia, settled in Brooklyn, N.Y., where Mrs. Robinson was born. When she was 6 months old, her father contracted tuberculosis and was sent to a sanitarium in the Catskill Mountains. A year later, the family joined him and they lived in Livingston Manor, N.Y., where she graduated from high school.
In 1930 she graduated from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
That year she married, Theodore, an African-American whom she met in college.
“In some ways she lived a very conventional life but in other ways she was ahead of her time in breaking conventions when she saw them as unfair and unjust,” said her daughter Judith. “Interracial marriages were usual at that time and it took courage on both their parts to take this unusual step.”
The couple moved to Chicago and while her husband attended law school at the University of Chicago, Mrs. Robinson took courses in social work at the university.
She went on to work as a caseworker for Cook County.
A strong believer in unions, Mrs. Robinson was proud of her active participation in the State County and Municipal Workers of America Union from 1932 to 1944.
“She saw unions as a way for powerless workers to band together to work for better wages and working conditions for all,” said her daughter.
Mrs. Robinson worked until 1944 and then stayed home raise to her children.
The family moved in the late 1940s to York Center where her husband was the legal counsel.
In 1959, she joined the Willowbrook High School staff and rose to assistant dean. After retiring at 65, she became a substitute teacher.
“Toward the end they asked her to come in and talk to the kids about life,” said her daughter. “She was a repository of information about the old days, and she did that until she was 82.”
Her husband died in 1972.
She is survived by another daughter, Elizabeth, and a granddaughter.
A memorial service will be held at 3:30 p.m. Saturday , Oct. 15,in York Center Church of the Brethren, 1S071 Luther Ave., Lombard.
