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Note: SOURCE: family records; Robinsons and Relatives. Walter7 (Walter6 William5 John Berry4 Hugh3 William2 John1) was descended from John Robinson, who came to America before the American Revolution and settled in Lincoln Co., North Carolina.
Walter graduated from high school at the age of fifteen and attended Los Angeles Junior College for a year before transferring to Whittier College, majoring in engineering. However, the depression was at its height at the time and he had to drop out of school to go to work.
He worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps and the U.S. Forest Service, serving as a fire lookout on Grassy Mountain. In fact, he and Dot spent their honeymoon in the lookout tower there. Soon after, he found employment with the U.S. Postal Service, first as a clerk, then with the Railway Mail Service, on trains between Los Angeles and San Francisco. He and Dot bought a small house in Los Angeles and hired a housekeeper to care for Carol.
When World War II started, Walter was appointed as a Post Office Inspector and was sent first to San Francisco, then Sacramento, Tucson, Phoenix, and finally back to Southern California in 1946. The family struggled to find housing in the war years, and lived in some interesting places including a public housing project and (in Tucson) a converted chicken house.
In 1947 Walter transferred back to the Railway Mail when he was offered a post in Honolulu, serving the Territory of Hawaii and the Trust Territories of the Pacific. From 1947 to 1949, Walter traveled all over the Pacific, an aspect of the job that he enjoyed immensely. In those days mail was carried mainly by ship and only occasionally by air, and part of his job was to inaugurate new air routes. Dot worked for the Credit Bureau of Hawaii. The family enjoyed Hawaii, especially the many different cultures and the opportunity to sample each one and observe the different life styles and customs.
In 1949 Walter transferred back to the Inspection Service and was posted to Missoula, Montana, and the family reluctantly left the Paradise of the Pacific for an isolated town in the Rockies, experiencing culture shock in addition to climatic shock, arriving in Missoula in January without winter clothing. The Missoula territory included assignments in Alaska, and Walter spent the summer of 1951 inspecting post offices in Alaska. He often flew with bush pilots into remote Arctic towns, and the family enjoyed his letters and copies of the "Mukluk Telegraph" (published at Kotzebue) he sent home, as well as his photographs. Meanwhile Dot went to work for the U. S. Forest Service, which in that area serviced the Smokejumpers and the Remount Stations.
1952 found the family on the move again, to Seattle, Washington, this time. Dot found work with General Services Administration in their accounting department and began to take accounting classes to further her career. Walt transferred to the Real Estate department of the Post Office, and began negotiating for leases and post office sites. Later he transferred to the Portland office for several years, returning to Seattle in 1961, and finally to San Francisco in 1965. Meanwhile Dot was moving up in GSA, finally managing her own section of Accounts Payable clerks. They retired in 1972 and moved to Rancho Bernardo, in northern San Diego County.
After formal retirement, Walt spent 15 years as a consultant to the Postal Service, Corps of Engineers, GSA and other agencies, writing manuals, teaching real estate courses, and appraising commercial real estate. Dot accompanied him and assisted with research and accounting, which provided the couple with many interesting trips throughout the west, and to Hawaii and Samoa. Richard joined the company in 1982, and carried it forward after Walt's full retirement. They traveled extensively, and visited 80 countries as well as all 50 states. They also enjoyed entertaining, and playing golf and bridge.
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