By Robert Medley
Managing Editor
For the 19th time, Linda Robinson celebrates her birthday on a day that has only come around every four years, leap day.
Born on Feb. 29, 1948, Linda Robinson (Winn) of Piedmont planned to be surprised this year on what is really her 76th birthday Thursday, Feb. 29, 2024. But it is fun to think of it as her 19th birthday, since leap day is not every year. She wore her shirt that reads, “My birthday is on Feb. 29” for a recent interview about her life.
One leap day years ago, relatives surprised her with Elvis impersonator Brian Dunning of Yukon. Robinson is a big Elvis fan. She also had the same last name as Mrs. Robinson in the Simon and Garfunkel 1968 hit “Mrs. Robinson.”
The song was made popular with the movie “The Graduate.”
When Linda Robinson was in college, she was a pen pal for a Marine and Navy newspaper. The Vietnam War was underway, and sailors and soldiers sent her letters. Some came from those who never returned. Because of the popularity of the song at the time she was a pen pal, Linda Robinson found a full mailbox daily, and she tried to answer all of those letters. Years later she would even meet one of her pen pals.
Born in Hobart General Hospital
On the front page of the Thursday, March 4, 1948, edition of The Kiowa County Star-Review, under the main headline that read, “Junior Livestock Show Here Today,” the first picture of Linda Robinson appeared. The headline read: “Three will be one in four.” There were three leap day babies on the front page.
There was Donald Wayne Watson of Mountain View, weighing in at 7 pounds and 12 ounces, Donald Ray Crawford, 10 pounds and 11 ounces of Lone Wolf and Linda Carolyn Robinson, 8 pounds and 11 ounces who were photographed by the Star-Review photographer Modena Palmer as nurses held the babies before they left the hospital that day.
Robinson graduated from high school in 1966 and went to college at Oklahoma College of Liberal Arts at Chickasha. She finished a home economics degree in three years. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English education at Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee. She earned a master’s degree at Texas Women’s University in Denton, Texas in 1994. She taught senior English classes at Piedmont High School and also ran the yearbook from 2001 to 2011.
While in college in Chickasha she found out about a pen pal with a Marine program. She was a popular pen pal.
“When they found my name, especially since my last name is Robinson and Simon and Garfunkel’s song was out, well, one day I went to my post office box, and it was empty. But the next day I had five letters. Then the next day I had 10 and the next day I had 20,” Linda Robinson said.
“Every day I would have more and more from soldiers, Marines and Naval soldiers in Vietnam. So I alphabetized them and went around campus to get other girls on campus to write them. I only met one of them, (pen pals) that did come to Oklahoma years later and looked me up,” Linda Robinson said. “Some of them when I wrote to them, I would get a response back from their commanding officer that they had been killed in action in the time since they got my letter.”
She recalls when those fighting in the war were not even old enough to vote yet, when the voting age was 21 and the draft age 18 for service.
Life in Piedmont
Linda Robinson has a lot of family in Piedmont. Her brother Donnie Robinson, a former city councilman lives near her. Robinson works in the insurance business with Robinson Insurance offering property and casualty policies.
She said she remembers growing up and feeling a bit self-conscious about getting a special party at school on leap day.
In all the years she taught in Piedmont she only had one student who was born on a leap day, Linda Robinson said.
She joked about being short and being born on a leap day.
“I am 5 feet tall. My birthday is every four years. And I’ll probably live to 120,” Linda Robinson said, laughing.
