Robie, Fred S.

Description

Fred Smith Robie was born on March 7, 1920, in Aspinwall, Pennsylvania, to Blanche Elizabeth Hilliard and George Randolph Robie. He was raised and educated in Pennsylvania. Fred had three sisters and two brothers John and George. Fred was a graduate of the University of Pittsburg where he received a Bachelors Degree and Ph. D. He received his Masters Degree from the University of Michigan. In Rye his family lived at 62 Garden Drive and were members of the Presbyterian Church.

He married Mary Louise Kent on May 9, 1943, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at Aspinwall Presbyterian Church by the Rev. L. V. Rhea. They had three children during their marriage.

He was a Veteran of WWII, serving as a captain with the 780th Field Artillery Battalion. He enlisted July 17, 1942 and was honorably discharged March 2, 1946

After his discharge, some of his accomplishments included, he was the 1st president of Jefferson Community College, Steubenville, OH.
and was a former director of Alumni and Director of Administration at the University of Pgh. He was a FBI Special Agent in Washington, D.C. and was a debate coach for the University of Pgh.

Fred S. Robie talked the talk. He’s the man who taught the art of debate to such loquacious Pittsburghers as Robert Bork and Cyril Wecht. Mr. Robie walked the walk, too.

He was full of life and vitality, and he had a beer once in a while, too,” said Robert W. Dickey, a debater for Mr. Robie at the University of Pittsburgh and now president and general manager of radio station KQV. Mr. Robie died Saturday of heart failure at Longwood at Oakmont Health Care Center in Plum.

The two worked in western Tennessee together, winning some big cases and losing others that made them crazy with disappointment. Glendon said a coup for Mr. Robie was the arrest of a man with 300 aliases who specialized in stealing cashier’s checks. “It was one of those old cases, lying around for years, and Fred was the one who solved it,” Glendon said.

He had the evidence, but it was impossible to get indictments. There wasn’t a grand jury in the South that would return one.” Mr. Robie’s work for the FBI, which also took him to Oklahoma and Washington, D.C., was sandwiched between careers in education. Perhaps his most famous student was Bork, whom he taught at the former Ben Avon High School.

At Pitt in the late 1940s, Mr. Robie’s debaters included Dickey and Wecht, the Allegheny County coroner. “Being on the debate team was one of the great experiences of my life,” Dickey said. “We went on trips all over the country, pulling our nickels and dimes together to rent a car. In my time, It think we had 108 debates and we lost eight. It wasn’t because of me, by any means. It was because of the way Fred Robie taught us to structure a debate.”There was nothing we liked any better than to kick the dickens out of Harvard and those other Eastern schools, which we did.”

In 1970, he moved on to become . the first president of Jefferson Community College in Steubenville, Ohio. During his 15-year career there, he helped the college receive accreditation and he beefed up its degree and certificate programs. “His leadership has accounted for many achievements of the institution. He was a dynamic, hardworking man,” said Ed Florak, who succeeded Mr. Robie as college president and remains in that job.

Fred Smith Robie died on July 26, 1997, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at the age of 77, and was buried in Glenshaw, Pennsylvania.