| | | Voice founder Bruce Robey remembered fondly | | September 22, 2009 |  | | | Voice Correspondent | |  Bruce Robey and his wife, Adele, in a picture taken last month. (courtesy Bob Lester)
At a standing-room-only memorial service for Bruce Robey on Oct. 4 at the H Street Playhouse, hundreds of attendees alternately laughed and cried as friends and relatives remembered him as an affable character who was not afraid to speak his mind.
“When some ego needed puncturing, he'd do it,” said one of Mr. Robey’s best friends, Jim Kidney, who led the service. Kidney said it was that attitude that led Mr. Robey to start a newspaper to compete with the longstanding Hill Rag paper.
Robey, a longtime Capitol Hill resident and founder of both the Voice of the Hill and the H Street Playhouse, died at the Washington Hospital Center last month after a heart attack. He had been hospitalized for more than two weeks after suffering an initial heart attack in South Carolina. He was 65.
Friends and colleagues have credited Mr. Robey and his wife, Adele, with helping to revitalize Capitol Hill.
In the end, said Kidney, “Capitol Hill might best define his life.”
People are moving to the Hill "because it’s all nice and pretty and hip to live here,” said Patti Shea, a Voice columnist and former managing editor. “They’re moving here today because of how hard he and Adele worked. Everybody who moves here owes him a huge thanks because of it.”
A native Washingtonian, Mr. Robey was born at the Columbia Hospital for Women in 1943. He spent his early years in Anacostia before moving to Oxon Hill, Md., when he was 10. He graduated from high school there and studied music at the University of Maryland. In 1974, he married Adele. They moved to the Hill a year later.
The couple opened a graphics arts business, Robey Graphics, on Pennsylvania Avenue SE next to the office of Don Denton, a longtime Hill real estate agent. The Robeys later opened up a second graphics firm, Phoenix Graphics.
“He was a good friend,” said Denton. “I’ll just miss seeing him come through the door. He was always upbeat, in a good mood.”
Mr. Robey also an active member of the Capitol Hill Association of Merchants and Professionals (CHAMPS) and served as its president in 2002 and 2003.
“I counted on Bruce to give me advice,” said Kathleen Franzen, who was president of CHAMPS from 2005 to 2008. "Bruce was always generous with his time if I needed to run something by him. Every time I saw him, we hugged. Getting hugged by Bruce was like getting hugged by a teddy bear. It was great.”
Friends said Mr. Robey began publishing the Voice 10 years ago as a Web site. The site soon evolved to include a monthly print publication.
Shaun Koiner, who worked as the circulation manager for Voice, said Mr. Robey promoted the paper tirelessly. Koiner said the first time he got a ticket while delivering the Voice, Mr. Robey asked him, “Did you give the cop a paper?”
While Mr. Robey was still building up the Voice in 2002, the Robeys bought an old restaurant and turned it into a flexible-seating black-box theater — the H Street Playhouse, which some people credit as helping to spark H Street Northeast's ongoing renewal. When the Robeys opened the theater, the strip had barely begun to recover from the race riots that shook the neighborhood in 1968. It is now studded with stylish restaurants and bars and is home to the Atlas Performing Arts Center, which opened its H Street venue in 2006.
“He was a trailblazer,” said Anwar Saleem, executive director of the nonprofit H Street Main Street. “When no one was really thinking about putting a theater on H Street, he was able to do that. He didn’t get any government help. He put up his own money. He really wanted to push the theater very hard.”
In 2003, Mr. Robey received the Capitol Hill Community Foundation’s Community Achievement Award.
In 2006, he sold the Voice to The Current Newspapers, and he and Adele moved to West Virginia. But they soon returned to continue running the theater, and Mr. Robey continued to volunteer for CHAMPS, where his daughter, Julia, is now the executive director. He also worked to restart what had been a popular component of the Voice’s old Web site, a community discussion board at hill-talk.com.
“I think that Bruce was a brilliant, individualist thinker,” said Ward 6 D.C. Council member Tommy Wells, who attended church services with Mr. Robey at Christ Church Capitol Hill and said he will remember Mr. Robey's “always impressive” horn playing during the services. Robey was an avid trumpet player, and played with many groups throughout this life.
In addition to his wife, Adele, and daughter Julia Christian, Mr. Robey is survived by daughter Jennifer Ludwig of Leesburg, Va. He also leaves a sister, Kathy Hunter, of Fort Washington, Md.; a brother, Bill Robey of Accokeek, Md.; grandchildren Chloe, Andrew and Katherine; and nieces and nephews Kelly, Dean, Jeff and Stacie.
Memorial donations may be sent to the Capitol Hill Community Foundation, 419 East Capitol St. SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. | | | | | Log in to comment on this article |
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