HOMER ROBINSON

CLASS OF 2000
 

Homer Robinson was born October 21, 1921, and raised in Quitman, Texas.  He started playing tennis at the age of eight and played tennis, basketball, and track in high school.  He attended the University of Texas before joining the Air Force in 1942.  His military career began as an airplane mechanic, then as a flight engineer on the B-26.  He also trained with a bomber crew on the B-24 and was scheduled to locate radar tracking equipment along the coast of Japan when World War II ended in 1945.

He met the love of his life and wife of 67 years, Betty Gregory Robinson, at the Cadet Club in Vincennes, Indiana, and the two were married in February, 1944.  He finished college at the University of Indiana in 1948 and worked for the Standard Oil Company for 34 years as an accountant, computer analyst, and supervisor before retiring in 1983.

In 1967, Homer started playing tournament tennis in Oklahoma and was ranked # 1 in Singles and Doubles nearly every year for the next 20 years.  He also received 41 Singles and Doubles rankings in the Missouri Valley Section in each age group during that same time period.  He was ranked Nationally as high as # 6 in Men's 65 Doubles and # 12 in Men's 65 Singles.

Homer has been active in tennis organizations since 1967.  He served on the Board of Directors of the Oklahoma Chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation for many years, served as Treasurer and Chairman of the Trustees of his church.  For 15 years, he was on the Board or an Officer of the Tulsa Racquet Club, Tulsa's first indoor facility.  He was Vice-President of the Tulsa Area Tennis Association for 20 years, Vice-President of the Oklahoma District Tennis Association for several years, and used the USTA STAR computer program since its inception to rank the Oklahoma men's divisions.  He was the Chairman of the Missouri Valley Tennis Association Hall of Fame Committee for 12 years and has been inducted into the Missouri Valley Tennis Association Hall of Fame.  He passed away on October 14, 2011.