Fact-Checking George Robinson's Death: Did Ray Charles Really Witness the Accident?
By Alexander Ross
The unsung figure throughout the George Robinson tragedy was the boys' mother, Aretha. A woman of extraordinary resolve, Aretha refused to let George’s death destroy her surviving son. More critically, she refused to allow Ray's encroaching blindness to turn him into a dependent ward of the state.
Following the funeral, neighbors counseled Aretha to teach Ray how to beg or prepare him for a life on a front porch. Her reaction was severe. She demanded that Ray learn to navigate the homestead using sound, smell, and tactile memory. She forced him to split firewood, clean dishes, and haul water from the outdoor pump, intervening only when he was in genuine danger of stepping on a venomous snake or tripping into a cooking fire.
In 1937, knowing her own resources were exhausted, Aretha fought to secure Ray a spot at the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine, a state-supported residential institution located more than 150 miles east of Greenville. The school was racially segregated, with Black students housed in substandard facilities and assigned separate classrooms.
Despite the institutional inequities, St. Augustine provided Charles with formal musical instruction. He learned to read Braille music, master classical piano compositions by Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, and play the clarinet and alto saxophone. When Aretha died suddenly in the spring of 1945, when Ray was just fourteen, he was left entirely without family. George was gone; Aretha was gone; his father was an elusive stranger. The rigorous independence Aretha drilled into him in the wake of George's drowning became his sole survival mechanism.
Alexander Ross has covered the video game industry for a decade, writing deep dives on game design, esports tournaments, VR developments, and gaming culture.
