Connie Wilson Roberts passed away peacefully in the Arbor of Westminster Retirement Center on Sept. 16, six days after her 100th birthday. Connie was born Sept. 10, 1922 to Nellie Mae and Robert Carson Wilson and was raised in Austin, Texas.
As an energetic young girl, Connie took many years of dance lessons at Duval ballet studio. Ballet became her passion, and photos of her recitals regularly appeared in local publications and advertisement. Connie and her friends also roller-skated in the old Austin neighborhood, sometimes climbing their favorite live-oak tree on 8th street in their skates.
At Pease Elementary School in 1930 a photographer for publisher Charles Scribner selected Connie and her brother Robert as models for a new style of reading textbook that featured color photographs instead of drawings. The resulting Second Reader was adopted for statewide use in Texas and more than 20 other states.
While attending Austin High School, Connie worked at Austin’s Browning Airport and was a member of the Red Jackets social club. She also helped with bookkeeping at her grandparents’ business, the McKinstry Wholesale Produce Company on 1st Street near Congress.
Entering UT in 1939, Connie began studying finance and accounting in keeping with her family’s business background. Connie was a member of Chi Omega sorority, a Bluebonnet Belle, and a nominee for Sweetheart of UT. UT’s Texas Ranger Magazine selected her as the “prettiest, most sociable and wholesome” freshman co-ed of the year.
During a party at the Chi Omega house, Connie met law student John Clarke Roberts whose face she immediately recognized from campus publications and posters. Within a year, they had become sweethearts.
By mid-1942, WWII had intervened, and John was called up for naval officer training at Northwestern University. After John’s graduation from officer training, John and Connie married on May 15, 1942 at First Methodist Church in Austin. The next day they boarded a train for San Francisco where John reported to the battleship USS New Mexico, which abruptly sailed out to the Pacific. Unexpectedly alone with little money and no place to live, ever-resourceful 19-year-old Connie quickly found an apartment in the Marina District. The next day she found work as a civilian cryptographic specialist for the Army headquarters at nearby Fort Mason. She and her family were always proud of her wartime service, though for several decades she would not disclose many details of her cryptographic work.
Later, when John transferred to the new carrier USS Lexington and then the new battleship USS Wisconsin, Connie lived with constant dread of a Western Union courier bringing bad news, especially after the Lexington had been torpedoed and severely damaged. During the rest of the war, Connie led an exciting life as a Navy wife, traveling to Norfolk, Boston, and Philadelphia to support John whenever he was home from the Pacific.
After the war, Connie and John decided to stay with the Navy, and he continued service in the Naval Judge Advocate's branch — the future JAG corps. During the next 23 years, Connie lived in a variety of places: Washington, DC/Alexandria, Virginia; China Lake naval research center in the extreme heat of the California Mojave Desert, followed by the extreme cold of the naval headquarters at Kodiak Island in the Territory of Alaska; the Naval Postgraduate School in the Monterey Peninsula of California; Washington, DC/Alexandria, Virginia again; and the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island.
Connie and John never forgot their Texas roots and eventually made their way back to Austin in the 1980s. After John’s death in 2007, Connie lived at Westminster Retirement Center in Austin, where she renewed high-school and UT friendships from the past and made many new friends.
Connie was intensely interested in her Scotch-Irish heritage. Through her parents’ oral history and her own research, she learned names, dates, and details of Wilson/Carson/Hassard ancestors who fought in the American Revolution — and about their origin in Northern Ireland.
Connie and John traveled together by car throughout western Europe and Great Britain. In 1985, in Northern Ireland they found Wilson relatives whose 300-year-old family records documented the migration to America of the Wilsons who eventually came to Texas.
Connie’s parents, Austin attorney Robert Carson Wilson and Austin high-school teacher Nellie Mae McKinstry preceded her in death and are buried in Austin Memorial Park.
Connie is survived by her four children: John Clarke Roberts IV (Betty) of Denton, Texas; Brian Wilson Roberts (Concetta) of Portland, Ore.; Susan Earle Roberts McBride (Keith) of Huntsville, Ala.; and Kathryn Nell Roberts of Austin, Texas; and grandchildren Court Sullivan, Meredith Sullivan White, Carla Roberts, Alexander Roberts, Stephen Roberts; and great-grandchildren Peyton, Mackenzie, and Camden White, with a baby on the way from Alexander and Joana Roberts.
The Roberts Family are grateful to Westminster Retirement Center for their care of Connie in her last years, and to Ben, Keisha, Tienzen, Patricia, and many others. Thank you all.
Visitation will be from 6 to 8 PM on Friday, Sept. 23, 2022, at Weed Corley Fish Funeral Home, 5416 Parkcrest Drive, Austin, 78731.
Funeral services will be at 2 PM on Saturday, Sept. 24 at Hyde Park Presbyterian Church, 3913 Ave B, Austin, Texas, 78751, followed by burial in Austin Memorial Park on Hancock Drive. At the cemetery we will announce the location of a reception.
Anyone who knew Connie soon learned of her lifelong special affection for cats. In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to cat rescue organizations such as Shadow Cats, Austin Pets Alive, or Emancipet Clinics.
Published in Austin American Statesman