STAMP OF APPROVAL On New Year's Eve morning, family and friends of Ron Robinson gathered at his resting place at Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock and toasted him with orange slushes (Robinson, we are told, was an orange slush fanatic).
They were celebrating the Dec. 27 signing by President Biden of H.R. 6080, a bill introduced last year by Rep. French Hill to rename the Forest Park Station Post Office at 5420 Kavanaugh Blvd. as the Ronald A. Robinson post office.
It's an apt tribute to Robinson, the former chief executive officer of Little Rock advertising agency CJRW, who died at age 75 on Aug. 14, 2018. He was a lifelong stamp collector and devoted postal service patron (the sides of his gravestone mimic the perforated edges of a postage stamp). In 1993 he was appointed to the U.S. Postal Service's Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee, the group responsible for the screening and recommendation of topics to be depicted on U.S. postage stamps. He served for 15 years and helped in the development of more than 1,750 stamp issues, many of them Arkansas- related.
"Ron Robinson was larger than life and was an avid stamp collector," Hill said. "His work on the United States Postal Service Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee makes him the ideal citizen to name his neighborhood post office after in recognition of his lifetime service to Arkansas and America. Ron was a dear friend and business mentor for two decades. I am proud that my legislation to rename the post office after Ron Robinson was signed into law."
Robinson was a regular at the Forest Park Station post office, said his son, Reid, last week.
"When my mom and dad moved here from St. Louis, they lived in the Heights and that was the post office he used for 50 years. Sentimentally, it has a lot of significance."
Reid spoke of his childhood and going to the post office with his father and then visiting his great-grandmother, who lived across the street in what was then an apartment building.
"He would be proud, but he would also be very humbled that he is being remembered like this," he said.
SINGING THE ANTHEM Last Sunday, Magnolia native and Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter-producer Shannin Rae Watkins, aka Shining Rae, sang the national anthem before the game between the Los Angeles Clippers and the Atlanta Hawks at Crypto.com Arena.
"The little girl in me is still beaming knowing my parents were able to see me on television doing what I love," she said in an email. "One of the refs walked up and gave me a fist bump and said, 'Kill it!' I was so ecstatic ... I will never get over these moments. I'm so grateful and deeply inspired to push my artist career to the next level."
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