Page 101 of Hello, Summer
“I do have feelings for you,” she protested. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. But this—you and me? This is so new. I’m just out of a relationship, you’re newly divorced…”
“Were you in love with this guy Kevin? The reporter in Atlanta?”
“No,” she said slowly. “I cared about him, but it hadn’t gotten that far.”
“Well, I’ve been divorced for almost a year,” Skelly said. “And Danielle and I were off and on separated for the last five years of our marriage. This isn’t some rebound thing for me, Conley.”
“Oh, Skelly,” she said softly. “Give me some time, please?”
He picked up his shoes and started walking up the path through the dunes. “I don’t have much choice, do I?”
36
FAMILY DRAMA FOLLOWS MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF CONGRESSMAN ROBINETTE
By Rowena Meigs and Conley Hawkins
Silver Bay, Florida—Both the widow and son of U.S. Rep. Symmes Robinette (R-Florida) have announced that they will run for his unexpired term, a development that is sending shock waves through Silver Bay and the Thirty-fifth District.
The seventy-seven-year-old, eighteen-term congressman died last week in a fiery, early-morning, single-car crash in rural Bronson County. Bronson sheriff Merle Goggins said the incident remains “under investigation.”
On Monday, Robinette’s widow, Vanessa Robinette, in an exclusive interview withThe Beacon,confirmed her intent to run in a special election, which will be held in November.
“Of course, I am heartbroken over the sudden loss of the love of my life,” Mrs. Robinette told theBeaconon Monday. “But public service has long been the focus of my life with Symmes, and I can think of no better way to honor his legacy than to continue serving his constituents in Washington.”
Earlier on Monday, Mrs. Robinette disclosed that Robinette received a diagnosis of end-stage non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma last September. Although the congressman was treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, his diagnosis was kept a closely guarded secret.
A few hours earlier, Mrs. Robinette’s only son, Charles S. “Charlie” Robinette Jr., announced that he has already formed a campaign committee, headed by Miles Schoendienst, a retired railroad executive and top political fund-raiser in North Florida.
“My father made it clear to me, even before his recent illness, that he believed I would be the best candidate to represent the Thirty-fifth District,” Robinette said. “Of course, we’d hoped I wouldn’t have to announce before his retirement, but cancer has a way of cheating the best-laid plans.”
Charlie Robinette, a partner in the Robinette Law Firm in Silver Bay, said his mother’s announcement took him completely by surprise.
“She didn’t discuss her decision with me or with anyone else in the family or [Symmes Robinette’s] close circle of associates as far as I know.… My mother is her own woman,” Robinette said. “Clearly, I think my father’s decision that I should run for his seat, should he not be able to complete his term, is one that should be respected.”
He downplayed the potential for a family feud stemming from clashing political ambitions.
“Thanksgiving could get a little awkward, but we’re a political family.… We’re used to finding ways of compromising.”
Charlie Robinette defended his father’s decision to hide his cancer diagnosis from voters. “We felt it was a private, family matter. Dad felt well enough to be in Washington, attending to the people’s business in Congress, right up until the end of his life.”
The body of Charles Symmes Robinette, a fourth-generation native Floridian, will lie in state Tuesday in the Capitol Rotunda, where government officials, including the president, vice president, Speaker of the House, and Florida governor Roy Padgett,along with other dignitaries, will gather to pay tribute to Robinette’s decades of public service.
Following the memorial in Washington, D.C., services will be held this Saturday at Silver Bay Presbyterian Church. The family will receive Friday night at McFall-Peeples Funeral Home.
But in the meantime, Robinette’s sudden death has revealed long-hidden cracks in the façade of the family life of the decorated Vietnam veteran and conservative congressman who also served in the Florida senate.
The obituary written by Robinette’s widow, Vanessa Monck Robinette, fifty-nine, and submitted to theBeacon,lists as survivors, in addition to Ms. Robinette, his thirty-four-year-old son Charles.
No mention is made in the death notice of Robinette’s older children from his marriage to his first wife and high school sweetheart, Emma Todd “Toddie” Sanderson Robinette, who married Robinette in 1962, when he was nineteen and she was eighteen. Hank Sanderson Robinette is fifty-two. and Rebecca Robinette Bouillotte, age fifty.
“Damn straight I left them out,” Vanessa Robinette said when asked about the omission. “They weren’t mentioned because they weren’t a part of Symmes’s life. You know what? I don’t even know their names. I doubt my husband could remember them either.That’show estranged he was from all of them.”
But according to Bronson County tax records, Symmes Robinette transferred title to Oak Springs Farm, a working quail-hunting plantation that includes a 3,500-square-foot farmhouse and eight hundred acres of timberland, to Toddie Sanderson for one dollar “and other considerations,” the day before his fatal accident.
On the same day, Robinette also transferred title to his former home in Silver Bay to Charlie Robinette, who has resided at the Trinity Street home since his parents moved into their 4,200-square-foot oceanfront mansion on Sugar Key, the gated country club subdivision developed in 2017 by Miles Schoendienst, Robinette’s longtime business associate and campaign contributor.
Vanessa Robinette was apparently blindsided by the news of her late husband’s largesse in deeding the farm to his first wife.
