Ann Marie and William L. McKay

Ann Marie and William L. McKay established this scholarship in 1988. They created this scholarship in honor of their daughter, Robin C. McKay. Robin graduated from the College of Health and Behavioral Studies with a BS in Speech Pathology. As a student, Robin was involved with the Marching Royal Dukes. Robin first became interested in the deaf when she attended summer camp in Hawaii at age 11. By the time she returned home from her two-week stay, she had mastered some of the signs she’d learned from the deaf children there. During the summers of 1981 and 1982, Robin was a counselor at a children’s summer camp in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Her enthusiasm for the children and camp activities was infectious: she persuaded her sister, Alison, to join her the second year.

In the summer of 1983, Robin volunteered at the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind in Hampton. Robin was a member of the band her freshman year at JMU, but she had to drop out when she took a job in D-Hall. By her senior year, she was co-student manager. She spent over 40 hours each week in D-Hall, doing what was supposed to be a part-time job. She loved every minute of it, though, thriving on the challenges presented to her and on the relationships, she developed with other D-Hall workers. Robin majored in Speech Pathology and Audiology.

She applied for the Peace Corps early in her senior year. The Peace Corps, however, required that she have more practicum, favoring graduate students, and Robin did an off-campus practicum at the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind in Staunton. She was invited to join the Peace Corps in Jamaica. Robin’s first assignment there was as the speech pathologist at the Danny Williams School for the deaf in Kingston. During her year at the school, Robin coached the boys’ soccer team, supervised the audiological testing, and conducted the speech and language assessment and remediation for individuals and groups.

In the summer of 1986, Robin was moved to a rural area of Jamaica, to work with a group of Rubella children. In addition to working at the Linstead School for the Deaf, Robin volunteered many hours at the Primrose House of Safety, a shelter for orphaned and deserted orphans. All this work did not prevent Robin from having a glorious time traveling around Jamaica with her Peace Corps friends. She often organized camping and bicycle trips. A breathtaking photo of a Jamaican sunset won her first place in the Newport News Daily Press photography contest in 1986, and a slide of two ancient shepherds taken in the Himalayan Mountains took second prize in 1987. The Himalayan photograph was taken during a trip-of-a-lifetime in June of 1986. Robin used her month’s leave to join her boyfriend and his family on a trek through the Himalayan Mountains in India. These same friends invited Robin to travel with them in June, 1987 for a trip to Brazil and Columbia to study family planning programs, a topic of keen interest to Robin.

After the trip, Robin would return home, her Peace Corps service completed, and enter Gallaudet University’s master’s degree program in deaf counseling. Several days into the trip, Robin became ill with viral myocarditis. Complications led to her untimely death only three days before her return to the United States and her family.