Retro RFH Gym Teacher Appreciation: Pat Robinson, a Near-Centenarian

RFH gym teachers of the 1970s Photo/RFH yearbook

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week. And, ironically, May 4, the start of the week, marked the posthumous 100th birthday of a former longtime RFH gym teacher and field hockey coach — icon Pat Robinson, who passed away just shy of her centenarian milestone.

Robinson was a true trailblazer in girls sports. She championed equality when the young women she taught and coached barely realized discrimination was an issue, living with the “boys will be boys and athletes” credo.

Though, many of the teens Robinson coached and taught knew instinctively that there was something special about her. She was unapologetically frank and persistent. Unwavering, yet gracious in her commitment to and support students, the game and defiance of the status quo.Those were the qualities that got a field hockey team instituted at RFH. They were also the qualities that emblazoned some unwittingly profound messages into the minds of young women and men.

Yes, there were many teaching moments in Pat Robinson’s class and out on the field. Her students have been remembering them since the news of her death a couple of weeks ago.

RFH grad David Hicks looked back on her birthday, saying, “Pat Robinson would have been 100 today. She missed it by a couple weeks. I knew her as my gym teacher in the late 1970s and in the past three years I visited her as a lay eucharist minister. Miss you Pat! May the fourth be with you!”

Most who had Robinson as a teacher (usually sex ed) or a coach or both had a Pat Robinson teaching moment stuck in their minds. And that moment usually involved some sort of brazenly caring advice. It was the sort of no nonsense for which she was known and loved.

As a teen in the 1970s, trend-setters who defied sexism at RFH and any other high school tended to catch and hold the attention of both head-strong athletes and meek gym class dodgers.

Pat Robinson’s field hockey girls were privy to many of those moments, quips and quotes. They never forgot.

The athletically challenged, like myself, didn’t either, even if the moment was the exasperated gym teacher pulling my inept self out of a volleyball game to save the team and me from embarrassment.

I vividly remember the grin on her face as she either checked my carefully forged note from Mom to get out of gym or pulled me out of the volleyball game after the ball bounced off my head one too many times, I got booed by competent teammates, or was the last choice for the team with a fight over who was stuck with me.

As if the stink of the sweat-riddled gym and the diaper-looking uniform weren’t enough humiliation (Remember those white Stay Puft Marshmallow Man gym get-up doozies?), there was always the mandatory group shower. Some missed gym class to save themselves from these fates so much that they either had summer school or couldn’t graduate. It was that worth it for the gym-challenged.

So, we salute a trailblazer of a coach and teacher among fearless RFH gym leaders and coaches. Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson! H – E – double hockey sticks, yes!

You know Pat Robinson. Do you know who the other gym teachers are in the photo? Name them. Your favorite Pat Robinson quote or moment?