Cynthia Robson Of East Hampton Dies At 72

Cynthia Robson

East Hampton native Cynthia Robson, a 42-year resident of Hebron, Connecticut, died on December 12. She was 72.

Born September 5, 1938, to Charlotte Pfaff and Julius Palabay, “Cindy,” as she liked to be called, this fall celebrated both her 50th wedding anniversary and her 55th year since graduating from East Hampton High School. According to family, she dearly loved the East End, as it was where she grew up and where she and her sister maintained their childhood home as a summer cottage.

Family said she was a gifted singer and guitar player, and as a trained mathematician, was hired in the early 1960s to develop nascent computer programs.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Rochester in 1959 and her first job was in the engineering department of Pratt and Whitney. There she met another new hire, her future husband Fred Robson, a mechanical engineer. As a software developer, she later worked for numerous companies including Dynamic Control Systems, Ashton Tate, Hamilton Standard, Hartford Steamboiler, Combustion Engineering and Traveler’s Insurance, retiring from Aetna in 2004.

While software engineering was her vocation, music was her avocation. For more than 40 years she was a dedicated member of the St. Peter’s Episcopal Church choir, performed in scores of productions put on in the 1960s and 1970s by the Podium Players Theater Group in Hebron, Connecticut, and played guitar and sang with St. Peter’s Folk during the heyday of folk music.

While Mr. Robson pursued his doctorate at the University of Connecticut, Ms. Robson became active in the host family program at the University of Connecticut’s International House. Maintaining her involvement long after her husband’s graduation, she directed the placement or “adoption” of any foreign student who wished or needed to spend the summer or holidays with an American family. Many of these students remained in her extended family. One such IBM executive in Japan never forgot her compassion and hospitality when he arranged for Ms. Robson and her husband to visit him and his family for a two week vacation in 2007.

In addition to her husband, she is survived by two sons, Christopher Robson and Mark Robson, both of Connecticut; a sister, Rosita Benson of Westchester; two granddaughters, Charlotte and Savannah; and two grandsons, Burke and Carter.

A memorial service was held on December 18 at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Hebron, Connecticut.