SEQUIM — Clallam County history expert and longtime Sequim School Board member June P. Robinson of Sequim died Wednesday after a long fight with ovarian cancer. She was 83.
“What goes with June Robinson is all the history that she had in the area, and that’s not replaceable,” said friend and Sequim City Council member Walt Schubert.
“It’s a real loss to the area.”
Mrs. Robinson, who was born in Seattle on June 10, 1925, was known for her dedication to local history and was a mainstay of the Clallam County Historical Society.
Society Executive Director Kathy Monds said Mrs. Robinson was not one to turn down a project.
“I remember when she was serving on the board, if there was a position that needed to be filled, other people stepped back, but June always said, ‘I was happy to do that,'” Monds recalled.
First emeritus member
Mrs. Robinson, a lifelong educator, was named the Clallam County Heritage Advisory Board’s first emeritus member last September.
She was also a recipient of the Peninsula Daily News Community Service Award in 2004, a nominee for the Sequim Citizen of the Year award in 2007, a member of the Clallam County Heritage Advisory Board; chairwoman of the Sequim Parks Advisory Board and chairwoman of the Clallam County Historical Society Board of Directors and the Sequim School District Board of Directors, which she sat on for many years.
Her current term on the School Board is set to expire in November 2011.
Mrs. Robinson was a teacher for more than 30 years, mostly in Seattle.
She worked for the National Archives in Washington, D.C., for about 10 years in the 1980s, and was a volunteer archivist for the Council for Exceptional Children.
Author, also
Her books covered the history of the Georgetown neighborhood in Seattle, town names on the Olympic Peninsula, local history for schoolchildren and lives of Sequim pioneers, said her husband, Ray Robinson, 81.
“She was born with it. She was born with a love for history,” he said.
“She did a lot of public service,” he added.
“She was generous with her time, and she volunteered a lot of this work.”
Mrs. Robinson wrote a monthly history column for the Peninsula Daily News, unusual in that she would publish a photograph of a historical scene one month, solicit reader memories about the building, place or landscape depicted in the photo and then add those memories while writing about the photo in her next column.
Diagnosed last fall
The columns of more than a decade stopped when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer last fall.
In December, doctors told her she only had a few days to live.
But she fought on, her husband said.
“She was determined to recover,” he said.
“She was still young at heart and mind. Her body just gave out.”
Monds said Mrs. Robinson’s greatest asset to the historical society was her talent for research.
“She was a stickler for detail, but that’s good,” Monds said.
“She would take as much time as she took to research any kind of a story or any kind of a lead.
“She truly loved history, and it’s fun to work with someone that spends as much time as she did to research a project.”
College at age 16
Mrs. Robinson graduated from Seattle University in 1946 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history. She started college at 16 and received her master’s degree in 1970.
“She was pretty talented academically,” Robinson said.
Mr. and Mrs. Robinson married in 1980.
They spent their first 10 years together in Washington, D.C., where Robinson was an analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency.
They moved to Sequim, where Robinson grew up, in 1990.
Mrs. Robinson’s mother, Laura Spath, was also from Sequim but moved to Seattle to become a nurse.
Robinson said he got to know his wife after her uncle married his aunt.
“I was one of the few people who liked to go to museums and archives, and one thing led to another,” he said during a December interview.
Mrs. Robinson would travel to the North Olympic Peninsula to visit her family and hike along the coast and in the mountains, Robinson said.
The couple didn’t have any children.
Briefings on history
Mrs. Robinson could be seen regularly at Sequim City Council meetings, where she briefed the council on the city’s history once a month, and at girls basketball games, Schubert said.
Schubert said Mrs. Robinson would speak to the council about a different topic each month for about 10 minutes.
With her wealth of information, she never had to retell a story.
“It was always about a specific thing,” Schubert said. “And I always thought it was very interesting and very educational for everybody.
“One of Sequim’s angels is up in heaven now where she belongs,” he added.
“She really is.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz contributed to this report.
Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
