Mary Frances Robinson

ROBINSON WINSTON-SALEM Mary Frances Robinson Dec. 16, 1918 - July 31, 2012 Mary Frances Robinson, 93, of Winston-Salem passed away peacefully July 31, 2012 at Kate B. Reynolds Hospice Home. She was born on December 16, 1918 to Milo C. McFeeters and Elma Taylor McFeeters in Ithaca, NY, the second of three daughters. Her father was a missionary in Egypt, so the family lived there for most of Mary Frances' life before college. She graduated from Wilson College in 1940 with a BA in French, and then went on to teach high school in upstate New York for several years. Starting in 1945, Mary Frances started graduate studies and was a graduate assistant and instructor at Syracuse University, teaching many students who enrolled on the GI Bill after WWII. After completing her coursework at Syracuse, she spent two years in France researching her dissertation and completed her PhD in 1954. In 1952, she came to Wake Forest College for a temporary position at about the same time as another temporary instructor, Paul Robinson. Within a few years, they became indispensable both to Wake Forest and to each other. Paul and Mary Frances were married December 26, 1955 and they moved with the college to the new Winston-Salem campus in 1956. She was a Professor at Wake Forest University until she retired in 1989, teaching French literature, and grammar and 20th-century drama. During her tenure she traveled to Dijon, France numerous times with the students in the University's semester-abroad program. She took the first group there in 1972. Paul and Mary Frances' greatest joy was to travel, making a trip abroad almost every year that they were able to travel. Aside from Dijon, their destinations included the American West, Alaska, Japan, Egypt, Great Britain, Switzerland, Italy, Austria and Hungary. She was preceded in death by her husband, parents and sisters, Ellen Turnbull and Ruth McFeeters. She is survived by daughter Pauline and husband Bill McMahon of Chapel Hill, daughter Ellen and husband Brian O'Connor, and grandchildren Clare and Sam O'Connor of Cape Carteret, NC, and many nieces and nephews. A memorial service is being planned for early September. In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to Wake Forest Baptist Church, P.O. Box 7326, Winston-Salem, NC 27109. Cox-Needham Funeral Home of Pilot Mountain (www.coxneedham.com, www.facebook.com/coxneedham is respectfully serving the Robinson family.