Longtime activist died deciding whether to call for help
Robar held key roles at SDC, moved well between cultures
By AMY RABIDEAU SILVERS
asilvers@journalsentinel.com
Last Updated: Nov. 2, 2002
Audrey Robar, a longtime community activist, died of an apparent heart attack while trying to decide whether to call for medical help.
Robar had worked at the Social Development Commission until Sept. 9. Her health insurance had expired at the end of September. Robar had found a part-time job with benefits but had not yet decided whether to begin paying the cost of temporary insurance.
She was 63.
After a couple weeks of being unable to shake cold symptoms, Robar began to feel much worse Oct. 23. She called a sister, Aldene Egan, after 4:30 a.m.
"I've got this pulling in the muscles across my chest and my arms," Robar said, according to her sister.
Egan told her that it sounded like a heart attack and that she should call 911 right away.
"But I don't have any insurance," Robar said.
Robar went to get her paperwork, then told her sister she felt dizziness and pain in her neck.
Egan heard her sister fall and the sound of her gasping for breath. Then there was silence.
Egan hung up and called for help. Emergency personnel broke the door down at Robar's northwest side home. Efforts to revive her failed.
Robar worked for the SDC twice, for a total of 18 years, most recently since 1996. In 1999, she was promoted from manager in the education, employment and training department to director of research, planning and evaluation, reporting to executive director Deborah Blanks.
"I don't think anyone at that agency could give more than Audrey did," said Norma Madison, a friend from SDC who now is with the Milwaukee Urban League.
Friends said Robar was relieved to have landed a new job and planned to start Nov. 1.
Janice Wilberg, an elected commissioner with the SDC, said she knew Robar for 20 years in Robar's many community roles.
"She worked in the Hispanic community, the African-American community," Wilberg said. "She had an emerging role in the Hmong community. She was all over the map. . . . She could cross all this cultural junk that traps other people.
"She just had a lot of energy. She was tireless. She never did it for the pay - she sure never did it for the pay. She just put her shoulder to the wheel and did it."
Robar, born in Milwaukee, was the second of seven children. She would sometimes share stories of poverty during her own childhood. Her father, often absent, moved the family around the Midwest. For years, they lived without any kind of permanent shelter, often without water or electricity.
Once her father built a sort of house on the back of a flatbed truck. At other times, the family lived in a makeshift trailer, an Army barracks bus and a tent.
"That was where she got her intuition and inspiration," said daughter Alice Orlich, of her mother's work with the poor.
Robar's mother eventually returned with the children to Milwaukee, where Robar graduated from South Division High School.
She began working with community programs, earning an undergraduate degree in community education from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and later a master's degree, also from UWM. Positions included working in leadership with the Bay View Community Center and Career Youth Development, and with the board for the Sixteenth Street Community Health Center.
Robar and her husband, Sam Orlich, divorced in 1972. She is survived by daughters Eva Robar-Orlich and Alice Orlich; son Sam Orlich; mother Alice Kowalski; sisters Aldene Egan and Arlene Zakhar; and brothers Alfred, Arlen and Allen Robar.
A memorial gathering will be from 5 to 9 p.m. Monday at Milwaukee Friends Meeting house, 3224 N. Gordon Place. A service will begin at 7 p.m.
A version of this story appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Nov. 3, 2002.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/nobits/nov02/92735.asp