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Glenn Roberts

Sorry for more bad news, but Glenn Roberts of our class has died. He had been suffering from Parkinson's disease for many years. Here is the link to an obituary that appeared in the Washington Post.

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/washingtonpost/obituary.aspx?n=glenn-roberts&pid=196718588&fhid=2167

I associate Glenn at Oberlin most with the publication The Activist. He was a section mate in a small section of mine on the top floor of Noah Hall in our sophomore year.

I'd welcome any recollections from others. Ted Gest

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/washingtonpost/obituary.aspx?n=glenn-roberts&pid=196718588&fSorry for more bad news, but Glenn Roberts of our class



 
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09/02/20 07:09 AM #1    

Liz Ryan (Cole)

What a wonderful obituary - I would have missed it so thank you Ted for sharing.  Glenn was SO passionate when we were on campus.  Now we learn where all that passion took him. I expecially love that he was a painter.

 


09/02/20 07:39 AM #2    

Stephen Wagner

Ted, thanks for passing on the news and the fine obituary.

I didn't know Glenn well at Oberlin, but he certainly has done at least as much good in his life as any member of our class.

I hope classmates won't mind too much if I take the occasion to report on a conversation I had some years ago with his sister-in-law Cokie Roberts, a fine journalist who died fairly recently and is also much missed.  She was the daughter of Hale and Lindy Boggs of Louisiana.  He was expected to follow Carl Albert as Speaker of the U.S. House of Reprsentatives when he was presumed to have been killed in the crash of a small airplane that was never found.  He was on it with Rep. Nick Begich, who was campaigning for re-election in Alaska.  Cokie's mother was elected to his seat by the voters of New Orleans and was repeatedly re-elected after the majority of the district's population was African American.  She was the senior female Democat in the House for a long time.  After Cokie gave a talk at Harvard, I went up to her and asked if I might ask a personal and family question.  She said to give it a try.  I asked how her female colleagues reacted to her mother's taking a postion on matters concerning abortion that she regarded as pro-life.  (The only other one who did at the time was Mary Oakar from an Ohio district including part of Cleveland.)  Cokie replied that the other Congresswomen understood that her mother's position reflected her own personal beliefs and also the position of a great many of her constituents.  (Louisiana is the only state where a very large percentage of African Americans are Roman Catholics and vice versa.)  However, lobbyists for pro-choice groups were much less understanding.


09/02/20 10:11 AM #3    

Charles Roxin

I remember Glenn well. This is probably because I enjoyed spending time with him. He rubbed off on me and my  memory of him  has always been vivid. He was a gift.

Chuck Roxin


09/02/20 04:24 PM #4    

Ted Morgan

Thanks for passing this along, Ted.  I remember Glenn fondly as a character with a good sense of humor, a really engaged activist, and a guy with a brilliant Joisey accent.  I'm working on wrapping my arms around the idea of him working on the Hill, but he certainly followed his passions wherever he went.


09/02/20 04:37 PM #5    

Ruth Adler (Rosensweig)

Glenn was one of the first people I met at dinner at Dascomb.  We were introducing ourselves, saying where we were from.  Glenn said “the City”.  Having lived my entire life in Ohio, I asked “which city”?  He proudly showed us front page articles from The NY Times with his brother’s byline.  I knew he would go on to do great things.  I’m sorry we lost him so young.


09/02/20 04:45 PM #6    

Paul Safyan

This remembrance of Glenn Roberts was given by Marc Landy of our class at a Zoom memorial and is being re-posted here with Marc's permission. -- Ted G.

From Marc Landy


Since Glenn and I were both so called “politicos” we knew each other almost from day one at Oberlin. But it was not love at first sight. I was from the Upper West Side of Manhattan and down with a bad case of wasp envy. I smoked a pipe for chrissake! He was Bayonne – brash, street wise, animated. If he smoked it would have been a cigar. But it wasn’t long before his smarts, good nature, and wit won me over. I came to love his stories about the mean streets of Bayonne and about his family that was so much more interesting than mine. He taught me the difference between a trailer park and a Mobile Home Estate (his father owned one).

We both became disciples of the same professor – Carey McWilliams -and through him were recruited to join the staff of what we claimed was the largest national student political magazine, the Activist (we ostentatiously refused to count the number of subscribers so we never knew how big a lie that was). Glenn was an editor straight out of a 1940s Spencer Tracy movie–all he lacked was a green eyeshade. And he put out a terrific product – the only thing that suffered was his GPA. But the most important thing about the Activist was that it had its own off campus office – a loft above Zilch’s florists. It was roach infested and graffiti strewn but it was OFF CAMPUS in the days when a man could only have a woman in his dorm room in the afternoon with three feet on floor and the door open – need I draw you a picture of the Activist Office extracurriculars?

He went on to a great career as a legislative director for Congressman Norman Mineta (D-CA) and Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and then had his own legislative liaison firm.

He was a great Oberlinian and an important and constructive figure in Washington.


09/17/20 01:42 PM #7    

Frances Hagberg (Graham)


Glenn, I recall from afar, was always gregarious, almost to a fault. Unlike a lot of Oberlin students, he wasn't shy. I didn't know him well, but enjoyed the sunny spirit that spilled around him in just about any setting. Through his connection to the Boggs, Glenn 's political world expanded into an amazing family, Lindy Boggs being but one example.

Stephen Wagner's comments about Lindy Boggs's position on abortion prompted me to share this. Lindy Boggs deserves to be remembered for her accomplishments for the country, racial equality and, especially, women's economic rights. I hope Glenn's spirit will allow for this digression!

In this era of one-issue considerations, it's worthwhile to say more about Lindy Boggs and Glenn's extended family. There's so much more to her story.

Maybe history could have been different if Walter Mondale had chosen Lindy Boggs for his Vice Presidential running mate (she was a strong contender) instead of Geraldine Ferraro. Apparently, Lindy Boggs lost out because of her views on abortion. But what she had accomplished in what was then the recent past was so significant and helped every woman in America . . . 

Glenn became Cokie Robert's brother-in-law through his brother' Stephen's marriage to Cokie. Cokie knew Glenn's wife from both working at NPR.  Cokie arranged for Glenn to meet Kitty, who became his wife.

Lindy Bogg's name was Marie Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs but she was nicknamed "Rolindy" later shortened to "Lindy" and as a politician became known as Lindy.

Lindy Boggs died at 97 in 2013, a month after my Foxtrotter mare gave birth to a spirited filly who is registered in Lindy Boggs' honor with the name "Chocolatier's Rolindy G" with the barn name Lindy. My way of keeping her spirit alive for me.

Lindy Bogg's had many accomplishments and came from a l ong ine of politicians (all the way to a Congressman who served when George Washington was president),

She was reelected many times, 3 times after the district was redrawn giving blacks a majority. When she retired from Congress in 1990 she was the only white member of Congress representing a majority Black district. She had been a longtime supporter of civil rights, antipoverty programs, HeadStart.  For women, she did something that was a major factor in overcoming laws that put woman at severe financial disadvantage from English law through the founding of the country into the 1970's.

She hated offending anyone but championed racial justice at a time when doing so invited the resentment if not hostility of most Southern whites.“You couldn’t want to reverse the injustices of the political system and not include the blacks and the poor; it was just obvious,” she said in 1990.  She saw the growing civil rights movement as necessary to the political reform movement of the 1940s and ’50s.

To parapharse from an obit about her: "[In her first term when the House banking committee was composing an amendment to a lending bill banning discrimination on the basis of race, age or veteran status she added the words “sex or marital status,”  then ran to a copying machine to make a copy for each member."

The NYT reported: "From her memoir: ' Knowing the members composing this committee as well as I do, I’m sure it was just an oversight that we didn’t have ‘sex’ or ‘marital status’ included. I’ve taken care of that, and I trust it meets with the committee’s approval.' Instead of insult she made these comments for people in opposition to her positions.

As a result of her participation and efforts, sex discrimination was prohibited by the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974.

Mrs. Boggs used her membership on the Appropriations Committee to push for other women’s economic concerns, like equal pay for government jobs and equal access to government business contracts. She became a champion of historic preservation and port development, flood control and housing in her New Orleans district.

She also fought for higher pay for senators and representatives, a politically unpopular cause, because she thought it would raise the quality of legislators and reduce turnover.

She had many other roles, several firsts (first woman to serve in various roles). I wish I could know more about how she and Glenn interacted and may have affected one another's views through their warm family connections. Most of all, I hope that Glenn and Lindy's spirits may animate future generations who aspire to political roles. While experiencing these Dystopian times,  we need to remember the strength and tenacity of people like Glenn and Lindy who accomplished what they did when there were no assurances their efforts would lead as far as they did.


09/21/20 01:11 PM #8    

Donald Salisbury

I am so sorry to hear about Glenn's passing. You have all been telling some fascinating tales about him, his family, and friends. I want to add one more little bit - which is perhaps unrelated. Stephen has mentioned Noah Hall in our sophomore year. My physics buddy Jim Jacobs also resided there at that time. I wonder if any of you might have been friends. Much to my regret I have lost touch with him and would really like to reestablish contact. I still have vivid memories of visiting him and his family in Toronto on New Year's day, January 1972. His mother Jane Jacobs was the influential author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The entire family moved to Canada to avoid the military draft.


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