Anne Durrum Robinson
May 14, 1913 - June 7, 2005
by Lynn B. Robinson, PhD*
February 2006
In 1997 Anne Durrum Robinson was the Intuition Network's Certificate of Honor recipient, the only person to have received that particular award, then or since. During her long life, "Annie" was mischievous identical twin sister, wife, mother, aunt, grandmother, great-grandmother, good student, poet, radio personality, corporate consultant, author, mentor, and intuition pioneer. Anne was a woman who could not be contained, who knew no bounds.
On June 9, 2005, The Austin American Statesman headlined a feature article, "Intuition guru followed hunches till the end," which reported that in the last two months of her life, Anne finished her last writings and recorded seven CDs of stories and advice. And Anne even scheduled a special lunch date with a friend and and the friend's husband of five years so that she could finally meet the husband. Anne died June 7, 2005. She had two heart attacks the week prior to her death and had taught a creativity class just hours before the first attack. She was active with American Creativity Association right up until her final breath. She was only 92 years young when she let go her Anne Durrum Robinson body, leaving a legacy of accomplishment and goodwill.
Anne was valedictorian of her high school in Clarksville, Texas. And she was football sweetheart.
She graduated from what is now Texas Woman's University, Denton, Texas with a B.S. in journalism. While there, she was freshman president, sophomore representative, junior president and loan sale manager, and student president. As a student, Anne won a number of poetry prizes, and the TWU library contains a special collection of her poetry, articles, and plays. In 1999, Anne was named a Distinguished Alumna and was speaker for the spring semester graduation.
For seven years after college, Anne was employed by the Texas Industrial Accident Board. She then became assistant manager and business manager of the Texas Union at the University of Texas, where she later received her M.A. in journalism. Again, as a student, she won prizes for poetry, one-act plays, and song lyrics.
During Anne's long professional life, she was employed as secretary, office manager, copy writer, magazine editor, broadcaster, account executive for advertising agencies, university teacher, building manager, and national and international speaker. She was a script writer for several radio and television stations in Texas and an editor for Lady Bird Johnson's Austin radio station. After winning a competition for writers, she also worked as a staff writer for the NBC network in Hollywood, California.
Later, Anne edited the Travis County Medical Society Journal. At age sixty, she became a writer/trainer for the state of Texas Department of Human Services. After five years, she retired and became an independent consultant, which she remained until her death. Companies large and small engaged her for creativity training, which included large doses of the power of intuition.
Active in the Austin, Texas chapter of The Association for Women in Communication, Anne was admired and appreciated. The organization's Creative Initiative Award was named in her honor, and she was the recipient of the AWC Austin's Mentor Award (2002), Liz Carpenter Lifetime Achievement Award (1995), Gladys Whitney Hearst Outstanding Chapter Member Award (1987) and Outstanding Austin Communicator Award (1978).
Anne received regional, national and international awards for poetry, plays, song lyrics and light-verse books. In 1995, she was chosen by the National Association for Women in Communications to receive their National Headliner Award. With that award she was recognized as a member who had recent national accomplishments and consistent communications excellence. Anne then kept company with other luminaries such as Erma Brombeck (1969), Barbara Walters (1993), Heloise (1994) who were earlier recipients of this prestigious award.
Anne's work and lively curiosity took her to thirty-five countries and to most of the states. Her love of life and concern for others created a network of friends that spans the globe. Among the friends are many members of the Intuition Network, recipients of her wisdom and willing help in their endeavors to create their own workshops and write their own articles and books.
Anne's wit, her lilting, marvelously expressive voice, and her titillating way with words held her friends and her audiences spell bound. She had grand stories to tell and impressive thinking to share, which she did beginning early in her life when she and her twin, Marye, wrote and performed numerous comedy skits for the Austin Little Theater and for other organizations. She wrote two light books of verse, Never the Twain Shall Eat (about working women, written with her twin, Marye) and Symphony for Simple Simon (a light verse coloring book, sold nationally and internationally, which has earned more than $50,000 for symphonies across the country).
Among Anne's personal stories was that of interviewing the country's first female Cabinet secretary, Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor for Franklin Roosevelt. During the interview, Anne enjoyed recalling, Perkins made a point by poking her in the chest with such force that Anne fell backward. And another was of being a college student interviewing Bonnie Parker before Parker and her outlaw lover, Clyde Barrow, were killed in a police ambush.
Yet another story was of the time she left LBJ speechless. In the early 1940s, Anne worked as a young writer for today's radio station KLBJ. She was talking to an irate sponsor on the station's only telephone line when a gruff voice cut into the conversation and demanded access to the line. She refused. The voice barked back, "Do you know who this is?"
"Yes," Anne Durrum replied, though she recognized the voice of then U.S. Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson, co-owner of the station. "You're the second person on the line. Now would you please hang up?" "Annie" being "Annie," she was never reprimanded by Johnson for her fortitude.
And Anne would laugh as she told of a time much later in life when she was struggling to get some groceries into her car. An ill-mannered employee asked rudely if she was sick. Anne (80-ish with silver-white hair) replied "Thank you. But I'm not sick, I'm pregnant."
Anne was a presence! Neither age nor infirmity deterred her style. Attending her last American Creativity Association conference in 2005, Anne presented from her wheelchair with gold shoes, gold lame handbag, and make up rivaling the most glamorous of women. She modeled what she espoused, being creative. She looked wonderful; she sounded wonderful; she was wonderful.
Most important to the Intuition Network, however, may be Anne Robinson's devotion to intuition and the reclaiming of its use in the industrialized world. She did this in her writing, in the classes she taught in Austin and at international conferences, and in her own unique outreach. Her workshops included, for example: The Whole Brain, Creativity, Creative Problem-Solving, Effective Writing, Effective Listening, Creative Stress Management, Accelerated Learning, Use of Humor, Productive Aging, Mind- Mapping/Clustering, The 7 I's of Innovation (Imagination, Illustration, Ideation, Intuition, Incubation, Illumination and Futuring). Anne made no secret of her belief in intuition, in the power of hunches, and in trusting that. She was firm in her sense that with the increased complications and faster pace of the world, the more necessary is the use of and trust in intuitive knowing. She was convinced that we're born with intuition, with creativity, but then have it "kind of hammered out of us." Anne worked to help herself and others, many many others, get it back.
For friends and family, far and near, a beloved connection with Anne was the annual Christmas poem she and her husband would write and send. It was always hilarious, appropriate to the moment in history, wonderfully written, and humorously illustrated in the margins with the barest of sketches.
Among Anne's poems :
To Be Creative
To be creative is to trap the wind
And tame it for the blowing of a kiss
To be creative is to net a star
And, with its shining, light a room like this.
To be creative is to snare the sun
And transform daybreak into a blazing morn.
To be creative is to mount a mule
And, riding, change it to a unicorn.
Anne had a drop-dead fabulous collection of cartoons from magazines and newspapers, from anywhere she could find them, that she used when giving presentations. They were all related to intuition, psychic perception, creativity and were hilarious! She must have had hundreds. (It may be too much to hope that Texas Woman's University in Denton, Texas has housed her cartoon collection with Anne's writings.)
In recent years, as Anne's mobility was impaired but in no way halted by her wheel chair, she made her home in Austin near the University of Texas into a sort of brain salon, open to anyone who wanted to learn how to boost the mind's ability to recognize and use unconscious thought. She called it the "Hunch Bunch at Lunch," a group of regulars who adored her. Among them, for example, were a computer systems trainer and a university director of instructional technology. And why did they adore her? Easily, because she was adorable: witty, colorful, full of giggles and laughter, and possessing a comfortable, gentle wisdom.
To celebrate the life of Anne Durrum Robinson, and to create a means of giving vent to feelings of love and loss, friends created an internet blogsite: http://adr2005.blogspot.com/. Anne was survived by her husband of 60 years, Harold, daughter and son-in-law Lear and Scott Weaver of Columbia Falls, Montana; five grandchildren; two great grandchildren; one niece and two nephews; and by students, admirers, and appreciative friends. She amused us; she challenged us; she inspired us.
The opening sentence in her obituary in The Austin American Statesman reads, "Anne Durrum Robinson, who believes firmly in reincarnation, has gone on to her next assignment." And what an assignment that must be.
*Though I wish I could claim kinship beyond friendship, I cannot.
Acknowledgment is given for much of the information about Anne to The Austin American-Satesman: June 9, 2005, "Intuition Guru follows hunches till the end by Denise Gamino and also June 10, 2005 Funerals and Memorials, to http://adr2005.blogspot.com/, and to AWC's link to the list of past award winners:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050210102014/www.womcom.org/headlinerwinners.html
Thanks also to Marcia Emery and Nancy Rosanoff for their memories of Anne. For anyone who would like to remember "Annie" with a donation, the following are suggested: The Association for Women in Communications Scholarship Fund, 1909 Windy Park Drive, Round Rock Texas 78664 or The Intuition Network, 8270 W. Charleston Blvd., Las Vegas, NV 89117.