Anne Kilbourne Jeffrey Robinson; 1928-2013: Education primary focus for volunteer

9/5/2013
BLADE STAFF
Robinson
Robinson

GAMBIER, Ohio — Anne Kilbourne Jeffrey Robinson, 85, who showed her commitment to education as a volunteer in the Toledo area and, later, by helping her husband in his duties at Kenyon College, died Monday in Kendal at Granville, a central Ohio retirement community.

Mrs. Robinson, formerly of Perrysburg, had cancer, her son Mark said.

She was a longtime resident of Gambier, Ohio, where her husband, Jefferson D. Robinson III, was director of alumni affairs at Kenyon, his alma mater.

The family moved to Holland in 1966 and then Perrysburg in 1968. Mr. Robinson became a vice president and managing broker of the Reynolds Road office of the Danberry Co. He had deep ties to Toledo. His grandfather arrived in the 1880s with glass titan Edward Drummond Libbey and became president and chairman of Libbey Glass.

“My mom’s love of Toledo was fostered in part by my dad, but she was very involved,” their son said. Education was her focus as she volunteered for Head Start and projects of the Junior League of Toledo.

Her daughter Trina Secor said: “She believed an educated mind could change the world.”

At Kenyon, her husband had the official duties, but she was a welcoming presence, and the Robinsons’ for many students “became a second home as [the couple] became second parents,” their son said.

Born June 10, 1928, in Columbus to Virginia and Joseph Andrew Jeffrey, she was a graduate of the Gill School for Girls in Bernardsville, N.J., and Endicott Junior College, Beverly, Mass. She had been a member of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America and former member of St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Perrysburg.

She and her husband married Sept. 11, 1948. He died Aug. 26, 2011.

Surviving are her daughter, Christine Robinson Secor; sons, Jefferson D. IV and the Rev. Canon Mark K.J. Robinson; brothers, Joseph Andrew Jeffrey, Jr., and David Lawrence Kilbourne Jeffrey; eight grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.

Memorial services will be at 11 a.m. Saturday in the Church of the Holy Spirit, Harcourt Parish, at Kenyon College. Arrangements are by the McPeek-Hoekstra Funeral Home, Granville.

Tributes are suggested to the Jefferson D. and Anne J. Robinson Scholarship Fund at Kenyon College or Hospice of Central Ohio in Newark.

Contact Mark Zaborney at: mzaborney@theblade.com or 419-724-6182.