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For 92 Years, She Was A Grand Link To The 'First Family' Of Tampa

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By KURT LOFT, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 25, 2008

Updated: 01/25/2008 12:13 am

TAMPA - She passed away in her wheelchair Sunday night watching fireworks explode above Bayshore Boulevard, a few blocks from where she was born 92 years ago.

She was the matriarch of a family rooted firmly in Tampa's history whose great-grandchildren hope to keep the flame of her memory alive through another century.

Lillian McKay Robinson was as much a part of the city's brick, spit and spirit as anyone could be, say those who knew her. With a lineage that includes no fewer than three Tampa mayors - the first held office in 1859 - she carried through her long and colorful life a legacy worthy of an Old World queen.

"The McKays arguably were the first family of mid-19th century Tampa," said historian Gary R. Mormino, co-director of the Florida Studies Program at the University of South Florida.

"They were vitally important to the economy and social fabric of the city," he said. "They were philanthropists and mayors and gunrunners. They were an extraordinary family, and were really a dynasty."

Robinson was born in 1915, a time of growing prosperity for Tampa. The city's population was pushing 55,000, and the world's first commercial airline service had just completed a year of flying passengers between Tampa and St. Petersburg. The shipping and cigar industries made Tampa an attractive place to work, offering pay scales competitive with other Florida cities.

Robinson grew up on Hills Avenue in Hyde Park, a few blocks from a stretch of beach on Hillsborough Bay where she fished and played as a child. On the road above - now Bayshore Boulevard - trolley cars rumbled on iron rails from downtown to Ballast Point and back.

"When my mother lived on Hills Avenue, they would walk down a path to Bayshore, and there was no paved street back in the 1920s," her son Ken Robinson said Thursday. "They'd go down to the beach, and my grandfather kept a boat down there."

Lillian McKay Robinson loved the water. And she loved to fish and cook, a passion that found its way into the restaurant business. Along with her husband, Keneath F. Robinson Sr., who died in 1968, Robinson ran Lil and Ken's Chick-Inn, a famous 1950s fried chicken eatery in South Tampa. The two also opened a bait-and-tackle shop and smoked-mullet house called Rudy's on Courtney Campbell Parkway.

Robinson was a grass-roots product of Tampa's educational system, attending Gorrie Elementary, Wilson Middle and Plant High schools. Although raised Methodist, she converted to the Lutheran faith and became a member of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, where friends and loved ones will say their goodbyes this morning.

Many will remember her legacy. Robinson was best known as the daughter of James and Frances McKay, a prestigious couple related to James McKay Sr., who held a two-year term as mayor beginning in 1859. Before going into politics, McKay helped pioneer an important cattle trade with Cuba.

The family stock also included James McKay Jr., who ran the city from 1902 to 1904, and D. B. McKay, mayor from 1928 to 1931 and owner of The Tampa Daily Times until 1933.

The moniker resonated through Tampa's history, attaching itself to the area's architecture and geography, from old McKay Auditorium at the University of Tampa to McKay Bay.

"It gives you a feeling that this is your home, that this is your town," Ken Robinson said of the McKay name.

Although his mother loved being a McKay, she accepted living under the silhouette of her husband's name and enjoyed a peaceful life of raising children, frequent family outings to the beach, and a zeal for fishing and cooking. She cared for her mother, Frances, who lived next door until her death in 1980.

Living so long in one place instilled in Robinson a strong sense of local pride, her son said, and she adored the annual Gasparilla celebration. She missed her last parade by less than a week.

"For her, Gasparilla was big," Ken Robinson said. "I remember how we would work all night at Lil and Ken's restaurant making chicken baskets. We'd make up 250 and have them ready for people to take out on their boats."

Robinson left her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren a lifetime of stories about life in Tampa. But she also left them the spoils of a lifetime passion: dolls.

"She had a huge doll collection," her son said. "She had a bedroom filled with hundreds of dolls. And we still have a ton of dolls now."

LILLIAN McKAY ROBINSON

BORN: July 5, 1915, in Tampa

DIED: Jan. 20, 2008, in Tampa

SURVIVORS: Daughter Sandy Stock of Springfield, Va.; son Ken Robinson of Tampa; four grandchildren; and seven grandchildren

SERVICES: Visitation will be at 10 a.m. today, with funeral services following at 11 at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, 501 S. Dale Mabry Highway, Tampa. To sign a guest register online, visit www.blountcurry.com.

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