24/03/2022
Patricia Robinson's family have kindly allowed us to publish the eulogy spoken by one of her grandsons at the Requiem Mass yesterday. It will stir many memories for lay Dominicans who had the joy of knowing her - and will offer a few surprises!
"Patricia was born in Bristol in 1922 – a very, very long time ago – the fourth of the six children of Isabel and John McCarthy. The family moved to Bradford when her father was sent there by his employers, moving on to Huddersfield when she was 14.
She was, her younger sister Maureen recalls, a very active child, always on the go and wanting to be part of everything that was going on, often taking charge – something that never changed and something, I’m sure, many of us had experience of!
She was good at her schoolwork and was especially talented at art and athletics, always coming first in her races on sports day. That competitive streak definitely stayed with her, and woe betide anyone who took her on at anything, from squash to Scrabble – if pushed, she could always resort to her own interpretation of the rules!
She left school when she was 16 and wanted to become a nun. Her father said that she was far too young to make that decision, so she got a job with the Inland Revenue in Huddersfield. It was wartime and the country was being bombed, so she had to take her turn at fire watching, which entailed staying all night at the office in case there was a fire during the night. One of her memories was of having to hide under the bed or kitchen table during times of bombing. Always one to live life to the full, she typically described her wartime experiences as rather exciting!
Patricia then decided she wanted to be a nurse and was accepted by Guy’s Hospital in London. This was at the time when London was under bombardment, and she nursed mainly air-raid casualties. Her training at Guy’s was a formative experience – all her children knew how to make beds with hospital corners – and she remained forever suspicious of modern standards of nursing and was often heard to say, “They would never have done that at Guy’s.”
After a couple of years, before she was fully qualified, she applied to join the Queen Alexandra’s Army Nursing Corps and was sent to India, where she nursed many TB patients. When the war was over, she came home, but before long there was a typhoid epidemic, and she went to Wales to help as a volunteer nurse.
When she came back, she looked for other ways that she could be of use. She discovered the rather strangely named Catholic Women’s League Huts and Canteens, who provided welfare amenities to the armed forces no matter where they were. Patricia signed up and was posted to Germany. It was here, in 1947, that she met Major Tim Robinson. She first came across him, somewhat the worse for wear, in the kitchen of the flat she shared with a friend, where he was scattering flour around like a sort of interactive weather forecast, describing the snow falling outside. They were married not long after in spite of much opposition, for religious and class reasons, from both sets of parents.
Patricia was always very fond of babies – when her sister Maureen was born, she was apparently delighted to have a real, live doll to play with and would wake the sleeping Maureen and smack her to make her cry so that she could pick her up and cuddle her. Patricia and Tim’s first child, Frances-Mary, was born within 12 months of their marriage – and they kept on coming… and coming. Patricia often described struggling up the steep streets of Edinburgh, with three children under three – the other two were Michael and Susan. A few years later, Timothy arrived, then Virginia, Catharine and the bonus baby, Nicola.
In spite of her burgeoning family, Patricia was a very keen entertainer and an excellent cook. She was well-known for her wonderful dinner parties, which perhaps reached their glamorous peak during Tim’s two postings to Singapore. She was also always very elegant and well-dressed – another thing that never changed throughout her life and the importance of which she was keen to impress upon her children, sometimes with limited success. Her glamorous wardrobe was partly due to the fact that she was a skilled seamstress and made many of her own, and her children’s, clothes.
Patricia’s religious faith was always very strong; it was central to her life and determined all the major decisions she made. This did not always make life easy for her family, on whom the effect of these decisions was not always entirely welcome, but it was this faith that made it possible for her to survive the most difficult times of her life – the death of her younger son Timothy at the age of 20 in 1974, that of her elder son Michael at the age of 40 in 1989, as well as Tim’s death at the age of only 73 in 1991.
Her legendary organisational skills, and an inability not to get involved, meant she was always very active in her local community. She delivered meals on wheels, she was a governor of La Retraite School in Salisbury, and was instrumental in persuading her neighbour Derek Alford to make Salisbury Hospice his chosen charity when he was Mayor. This led to the setting up of the hospice, which was eventually the place in which Tim died and where she worked as a volunteer for several years
Later, she turned her attention to establishing the Lay Dominicans, about which you have already heard. This became a central part of her life and led her to travel to many parts of Europe and even South America, something she found very stimulating and enjoyable.
She was able to transfer her love of babies and children to her grandchildren and later her great-grandchildren, and she was a great favourite with them. Her grand-daughter Hermione recalls hiding under the bed and eventually resorting to biting when her mother tried to take her home after a visit to Granny! She was also always to be relied on to help look after them in difficult times, dropping everything at the last minute to come to a daughter’s aid.
In spite of the difficult and impossibly sad events she had experienced, Patricia was always optimistic and made the most of life, and continued to be as active as possible. She loved travelling and, when Tim retired from the army they made several extended trips – through France and Italy, to Egypt and Africa – there is evidence of her in full Berber dress and riding a camel in Morocco. A few years ago, when she went on a Mediterranean cruise with Virginia, she drove her mobility scooter around the ship as she had always driven her car – very fast and dodging dangerously around any obstacle in her way. Her last overseas outing was a trip to Lourdes in 2019.
She carried on playing squash for many years and joined a gym when she was in her seventies. She had become wheelchair bound when I got married, but nothing was going to stop her dancing at my wedding, so I and my mother Ginny took her onto the dance floor and twirled her around in her wheelchair. She also retained her competitive streak and enjoyed playing scrabble with anyone who would take her on, even playing online in later years. She was a bit of a crossword fiend, and took up bridge, playing for as long as her sight and hearing allowed. She also became something of an IT enthusiast, embracing, and always very keen to acquire, all the latest devices. This helped her keep in touch with her many friends and family all over the world, right up to her last few months.
So, a loving mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, sister, friend and all-round good person, Patricia leaves an unfillable gap in our lives, but she always looked forward to her reunion with Tim, Timothy, Michael and the rest of her family, and I think that this may give us all some comfort now."
