Page 54 of Hello, Summer
The tears had vanished as quickly as they’d appeared. “Oak Springs!” she said, perking up again. “I remember now. It was Oak Springs. I’ll get Seanny to take me there. And you can come too.”
“I’d like that very much,” Conley said.
18
Conley’s cell phone dinged to signal an incoming email. Maybe all those emails and résumés she’d sent out were triggering a job offer.
She tapped the email icon and her hopes sank. Again. Not a job offer, she saw. Just an email from Kennedy McFall from the funeral home: “Here’s the Symmes Robinette obituary. We’ll send over the photos the family requested to run with the obit later today. Let me know if you need anything else. Enjoyed seeing you today.”
Resting in the arms of his Savior: The Honorable U.S. Representative C. Symmes Robinette was taken, suddenly, from this earthly plain on Thursday near Varnedoe. Symmes, a lifelong Floridian, was a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, a war hero, an attorney, and an elected public servant, first as a state legislator and then as an eighteen-term member of Congress. But he would be the first to say that his most important role in life, and the one he cherished most, was devoted husband to Vanessa and father to C. Symmes “Charlie” Robinette Jr.
Born in 1943 to Marva Franklin and Clyde D. Robinette, Symmes was an only child whose father died tragically young. Later, Marva, who went to work at the Varnedoe Denim AssemblyMill, married Gordon Pancoast, the manager who raised Symmes as his own. Symmes enlisted in the Marines at twenty-two, served honorably in Vietnam, and was awarded the Bronze Star for heroic service in a combat zone. Symmes became the first member of his family to attend college, at Florida State University, where he went on to earn a BA in government. He graduated from Florida State University College of Law in 1974.
Symmes opened his private practice in Silver Bay immediately after law school, and it was not long before leaders in the community recognized his intelligence and deep commitment to public service. He was first elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 1978 and was later tapped to run for Congress from the Thirty-fifth District. Among his notable achievements over many years of service to his community was the awarding of over $40 million in earmarked public funding for local highway improvements, water treatment facilities, and, in 1999, completion of the C. Symmes Robinette Veterans’ Administration Hospital in Bronson County, which he regarded as his crowning achievement during a lifetime of public service.
An Eagle Scout, Symmes was awarded many honors over his lifetime, including Florida Rotary Man of the Year, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Friend to Business Award, Christian Family Values Ambassador, and Florida Bar Association Award of Excellence.
Symmes was a member of the VFW, the American Legion, the Silver Bay Rotary Club, the Seminole Boosters Club, the Silver Bay Country Club, and Silver Bay Presbyterian Church.
Following a memorial service in the U.S. Capitol, there will be a celebration of life at Silver Bay Presbyterian Church on Saturday at 2:00 p.m. Reception to follow at the Baptist church gymnasium. Family visitation hour will be Friday night at McFall-Peeples Funeral Home.
Resting in the arms of the Savior. The phrase made her chuckle. At her first reporting job at theBelvedere Buglein Louisiana, Conley’s weekly responsibilities included gathering, rewriting, and editing theobituaries submitted by local funeral homes. The paid death notices, which were priced according to word length, were a lucrative revenue stream for the paper, so funeral homes and the bereaved were encouraged to get as flowery as possible.
She’d been given a list of sappy death euphemisms to use when writing the obits and invested much time and energy into padding them as colorfully as possible.
Angels carried her away, Joyfully singing with Jesus, Promoted to glory, Fell asleep in the cradle of death, Advanced to eternal life,andBreathed her soul into her Savior’s armswere some of the more popular euphemisms she employed in her carefully crafted death notices, but her favorite euphemism was one that she’d seen only once, when the grieving family of a bayou fisherman had written that their beloved father had “slipped anchor.”
Slipped anchor, she thought, had a nice, simple ring to it, although it had not been a big moneymaker for theBelvedere Bugle,circulation 2,617.
Conley drove around the square and parked in front of the former Silver Bay Savings and Loan building. The 1920s-era art deco, two-story building had been painted a tasteful light gray and transformed into offices for the Robinette Law Firm.
She sat in the car for five minutes, trying to find a reason not to go inside and confront a part of her personal history she’d just as soon forget. And that was the thing about being back in Silver Bay, she realized. For every happy memory, like watching a Gulf sunset from the porch of the Dunes or sipping a Cherry Coke at the lunch counter at Kelly’s Drugs, there was also the reality that with every block she turned in this town, it seemed, she bumped up against a sharp corner of her painful past.
A somber wreath of white lilies with trailing white satin ribbons hung from the law firm’s plate glass doors. The door was locked, but there was a discreet intercom button on the casing.
She pressed the button, and a moment later, a man’s voice answered, “Who’s that?”
She was so startled, it took a moment to gather her composure.
“Uh, hi. It’s Conley Hawkins. With theBeacon?”
There was a pause. “Come on in.”
The intercom buzzed, and she heard the lock click. The bank’s former lobby, where, accompanied by her father, she’d opened her first savings account at the age of eight, had been turned into a reception area.
Charlie Robinette was waiting for her just inside the door. He looked like an ad agency’s idea of a young lawyer; straight blond hair brushing his eyebrows, horn-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses, untucked blue oxford cloth dress shirt, skinny jeans, and polished oxblood loafers.
“Here,” he said, handing her a piece of paper.
It was a copy of the obit she’d just read in her car.
She tilted her head and waited. Nothing. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”
“Should I? Connie something, right? With the paper?”
“Not Connie.Conley,” she said, enunciating slowly. “Sarah Conley Hawkins.”
He let out a slow exhalation of breath. “Holy shit. Sarah!”
