Philip Freeman Robinson
                        Class of 1939

by Dave Thornton

Philip Freeman Robinson was born 9/1/1921 at Mary McClellan Hospital, the son of George Robinson and Marion Hitchcock. His father was a Veteran of WW I and a Past Commander of Capt. Maxson Post # 634. Hitchcock Robinson is his brother. His grandfather W. L. Hitchcock had a farm where Cambridge Central School is today. W.L. is also the contractor who paved Main St. in Cambridge with yellow bricks.

With local attorney Daniel Westfall, W. L. Hitchcock bought the Cambridge Waterworks, which had, until recently, remained in the hands of Hitchcock descendants. W.L. built the Hitchcock Block on West Main, from which he operated for many years a haberdashery and an insurance business. He was long a director of The Cambridge Valley Bank.

Of the illustrious Hitchcock family, one of Freeman’s uncles headed the Presbytery of Chicago. Another, Charles, ran Peekskill Military Academy. Peekskill Academy operated a summer camp in the Adirondaks. Many prominent Americans sent their kids to the Academy and the camp.

Freeman graduated in 1939 from the classical program at Cambridge High School. The Great Depression lingered. Freeman received a congressional appointment to the NYState Maritime Academy, where he took the "deck" course, as opposed to "engines" training. He entered the Academy the fall of ’39 and graduated in 1941.

Until the war came along, jobs in the Merchant Marine were scarce. He found work riding a tanker for Socony-Vaccuum (now Mobile Oil). They ran aviation gasoline from Venezuela to Halifax, Nova Scotia. The officers were American, but Freeman was the only native-born on board.

By this time, England was at war with Nazi Germany and the US was helping them. Freeman transferred to the ship The Eagle, which was sent to Beaumont, Texas to take on a load of fuel oil. They again headed for Halifax. Off Iceland they came across a British convoy being escorted by US Navy destroyers from Halifax to England.

Freeman’s ship went on to Iceland to refuel Destroyers and other ships that would pull up to them in the Fjord. They were there four months on the refueling duty. During that time they followed the progress of the war by radio. One of the ships they refueled was the British battleship The Rodney, which would be one of the ships lost in the battle to destroy the giant German battleship The Bismarck.

One Sunday night during the refueling, the radio operator picked up news of the Japanese attack on the American base at Pearl Harbor. The next day, they learned that the United States had formally entered the war.

It was in 1942, on a convoy run from Halifax to Britain that Freeman Robinson got a first close and near fatal taste of war. He was sailing toward Iceland on The Brilliant when a German submarine shot them up with its cannon. Fortunately, The Brilliant was not an oil tanker, but a low draft, cross-channel cargo ship that burned coal. The Sub didn’t fire a torpedo because The Brilliant had such a shallow draft that the torpedo might have passed harmlessly beneath the keel.

Nonetheless, in the rough seas, the ship caught fire between the bridge and the engine compartment. Those on the front where Freeman was had to abandon ship.

The seas were so high that water had gone down the stack and shut down the boilers. The Brilliant lay helpless. It was the rule in convoys that the other ships could not stop to assist. They sailed on for Europe, leaving Freeman and the other crew from The Brilliant bobbing like corks in the freezing North Sea.

He would have become the community’s first war casualty, had it not been for the rescue ship that picked them up. As it was, for two weeks he was reported missing because the ship couldn’t break radio silence to report the rescue.

Meanwhile, those on the rear half of The Brilliant were able to put out the fire. They got the boilers going again and began limping toward Halifax where they hoped the ship could be repaired. But in the terrible seas, The Brilliant broke up and went down.

Of the 42 crew on board The Brilliant, only 30 survived.

When he came home on leave, the Cambridge Lions Club was hard at work putting up a temporary honor roll to local men in service. They asked Freeman to speak at one of their meetings. His was the first "war story" the local community heard.

After that close call, Freeman served on ships making runs along the East Coast of the US and South America. It was a deadly game, for German U-boats lurked just off shore and waited for the helpless cargo vessels to sail into range, where they often torpedoed them in full view of the American coast

The Captain of The Eagle was one of youngest in the Merchant service, on one of its oldest ships. Designed like cargo ship, rather than like a tanker, it carried cased oil. It wasn't as popular a target as the big ocean-going tankers.

Off Georgia one trip, Freeman had the 8 PM-midnight watch. He got a bearing so that the ship would sail inside the buoy and not break the light, which would give away its presence to any U-boat lurking off the coast. But the ship behind them passed OUTSIDE the light and was torpedoed.

Freeman decided that if he was going to be in the war, he might as well be on a ship that could fight back. He tried to join the Navy. He wanted to go into submarines, but he had too much valuable experience. The Navy wanted him where he was. The Navy assigned Freeman to the NYState Maritime School as an instructor, but he wanted sea duty.

One day he went down to no. 45 Broadway, where the merchant seamen hung out between runs, and there he ran into a buddy who helped him get back on a ship. He had enough of the North Atlantic, so he signed on for a run to Oran, North Africa. He didn’t know that he was going where the first American action in Europe would be.

He did know that instead of oil, this ship would be carrying 10,000 tons of bombs. The "guy upstairs was looking out for him" on that run. On the trip over, German planes bombed the rear of the ship, managing to set it ablaze. Quite a number of the seamen leaped over-board, Freeman recalled, fearful that their volatile cargo would go off. But Freeman and others knew that since the bombs were defused, little but a direct hit would set them off. They stayed aboard and put out the fire.

When they arrived at Oran, they discovered just how close a call they had. It seems that the bomb detonators, which should have been carried separately, had instead been installed and shipped over in the bombs. One misstep and they would have been blown sky high.

Once in the Mediterranean, Freeman’s ship took an active role in transporting the troops and materiel that fought in the North African and Italian campaigns, putting troops ashore and later taking off German prisoners.

They took part of the 1^st Armored Division into Naples, into Sicily and finally onto the beachhead at Anzio. They wanted in on the invasion at Normandy, but weren't.

Freeman spent the entire Second World War in the Merchant Marine, finishing with the rank of Captain. He was 23 years old. After the war, many companies thought him too young to command a ship. But a new co. signed him to command a brand-new tanker, the Archer's Hope, built in Mobile, Ala. It had all young officers. The third mate, at 35, was oldest man on the ship. He had been a chief petty officer in the Navy.

Freeman made many trips with the Archer’s Hope. After VE day, they sailed into Bremerhaven, Germany with a load of oil. On other runs, his ship took off German prisoners and hauled locomotives, etc. into Europe.

They made runs to the Near East through Suez, into Persian Gulf, up the Tigris-Euphrates River to a staging area occupying 10 sq. miles, where supplies were funneled into Russia.

He transferred to another new ship and sailed another year for the company before they began laying off merchant sailors and putting up ships in mothballs, as the war effort wound down. At that point, Freeman felt that the Merchant Marine was going to be a slow career.

By this time he had married and had one child. He had married Jeanie Webb, who was herself a Veteran of the Waves. They spent summers in Cambridge, because of the terrible Polio epidemic that centered on the big cities. They lived across from the Post Office on Main St.

A son, Theodore Webb Robinson, was born at Mary McClellan Hospital in October '46. Then Jeanie gave birth to their daughter, Valerie J.

Like many a survivor of the War, Freeman decided to go back to school. He entered Brooklyn College and finished his bachelor’s degree. His MM Academy credits counted, as did a lot of the college entrance courses he had taken back at Cambridge High School

After Freeman finished his BA he went to Brooklyn Law School. Being a Veteran of the Merchant Marine, rather than the US Navy, he did not receive the GI Bill. So to pay the bills he sailed summers on the Grace Line, while Jeanie worked as a beautician.

After law school, he thought his extensive maritime experience would help him land a position with a big Admiralty Law Firm. But as he wasn’t an "Ivy League" grad, he didn’t get the job. Instead, he made a move that indicates that "the man upstairs" was still looking out for him.

Freeman and Jeanie moved their family to Long Island into a new village called "Levitown". They bought a home using Jeanie’s GI Bill--- a 4 percent mortgage with $100 down. And Freeman began to practice law.

At the time they moved to the Hicksville, NY community, there were 5,000 residents.

But Levitown was destined to be one of the great success stories of Post War America. Word spread quickly that returning Vets with families could obtain new homes at very reasonable prices. By the following year, the population of Hicksville had swelled to an astounding 55,000!

It was a case of practicing law in the right place at the right time. The Robinson family flourished. Since 1950, Freeman has owned his own law firm. Fifteen ears ago, "Ted" entered the firm. And today, Freeman and Jeanie are taking it a little easier.

Years ago, they bought a camp on the southwest shore of Hedges’ Lake on land leased from Gordon Nesbitt. When Nesbitt finally sold his holdings, Freeman bought the land, tore down the shack and put up a year-round home.

That’s where he lived until he died, among friends they had known for years.

Most people knew him as "Phil", the friendly neighborhood reporter, who penned an occasional gossip column for The Eagle newspaper about goings on around the Lake. But like many another CHS grad, there was a lot more to Freeman Robinson than just that.