KANSAN.COM / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2011 / NEWS
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CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Thomas Robinson poses with his mother Lisa Robinson and seven-year-old sister Jayla. Robinson recently attended his mother's funeral in Washington, D.C. with the men's basketball team.
ROBINSON (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
arrived. The Jayhawks got off their coach bus and, one at a time, hopped over a growing puddle of slush in their dress shoes and entered the church. They filed past Lisa Robinson's white casket and gave a short hug to their teammate.
Robinson rose from his seat and lingered over his mother's body before the ceremony started, wiping away tears. He had placed a white rose and a Kansas jersey inside the casket. Earlier in the day Lisa Robinson's cousin, MacArthur Wilder, said Lisa dreamed that her son would go to college..
Midway through the funeral Wilder gave a prayer thanking God for getting everyone to the church safely, including the entire basketball team that flew in from Kansas.
"We're family, and this is something we wanted to do for Thomas," senior guard Tyrel Reed said in a statement released by the Kansas athletics department. "Thomas is our brother and he and Jayla are hurting. We'll do anything we can to make sure they get through this."
Wilder also thanked the Kansas administration and the student
body for their support. Before the ceremony he marveled at the way a campus of 30,000 students seemed to become a much smaller place when one of their own was hurting.
"If you can only imagine in this time of pain and hurt, and tears that flow, that one of the comforts is that there are people who care." Wilder said. "You do have an extended family, and I believe that the University of Kansas for Thomas is an extended family."
Randy Beamon, the Jayhawks' team pastor from 2002 to 2009, now lives in Virginia and was at the funeral. Rev. William H. Gibbs of Antioch Baptist invited him to speak.
"This is a family, you know that Thomas, don't you, this basketball team is a family," Beamon said. Then he turned to the team on the other side of the church. "And you guys here, you have a huge responsibility to embrace him as you've already done. And that will honor the Lord."
Robinson did not speak at the funeral, but he stood nearby when
Jayla got up to read a letter she had written to her mom. With her father at her side, Jayla read in a small voice that was nearly inaudible even when Gibbs put a portable microphone in front of her. But the words "I love you, Mommy" seemed to come through clearer than the rest.
Robinson seemed to draw strength from the ceremony, which concluded with a soaring eulogy by Gibbs. He stood at the rear of the church as people filed past and accepted condolences. Coach Bill Self gave him a hug and Robinson said he was doing OK.
"It was a beautiful service," Self said in the athletics department statement. "It was sad, but also very uplifting. It was great to see that Lisa had so many family and friends come to pay their respects and pay tribute to her."
Outside the church the two groups mingled, with some of Robinson's family and friends posting for pictures with the Kansas players. When Robinson finally came down the stairs of the church and out onto the street the team
gathered around him almost instinctively.
Wilder said when he heard the news of his cousin's death his first thought was, "Oh God, how much more can we bear?" But he said that faith would get the family through, and that he was daydreaming the night before about Thomas Robinson being within the loving embrace of thousands of fans roaring for him at Allen Fieldhouse.
"This is what I'm sensing from the University of Kansas: that Thomas' pain and suffering is my pain and suffering," Wilder said. "That's what they're saying to me, and I found myself choking back tears."
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[Editor's note: Andy Marso is a 2004 University of Kansas graduate, a master's student at the University of Maryland and a contributor for the Washington Post. The Kansan tried to send a reporter and a photographer to Washington, D.C., but the flight was cancelled due to heavy snow.]
best tools for recruiting outstanding students. But for too long, many scholarships have instead been reserved for students at KU," she said.
Edited by Samantha Collins
After the speech, Gray-Little explained that it would be possible for upperclassmen to have less of an opportunity to receive scholarships but there would be more of an opportunity for the University's future students.
Gray-Little also said that by reducing the number of general hours a student was required to take would help improve retention and graduation rates.
"The question we must address is, 'What should every undergraduate know and have experienced before graduating?'" She said. Gray-Little said that the University was close to reaching a consensus and those new requirements would be used in the 2012-2013 school year.
The other challenge the
University must navigate is the state budget crisis.
Gray-Little outlined how the University had lost $43 million in state funding and un-funded
the downturn. She also explained that the University had experienced a 37 percent decrease in state funding over the last 10 years after adjust-
benefits as well," she said.
While most of the talk about the state legislature during the speech involved budget cuts, the legislature had one high point.
"The question we must address is, "what should every undergraduate know."
BERNADETTE GRAY-LITTLE Chancellor
ment for inflation. She said this had forced the University to cut down on that amount of offered classes and made maintaining a high-level faculty difficult.
"We understand Kansas continues to face economic challenges and that the recovery is still gaining strength. But we also know that higher education has public
Gray-Little announced to the crowd, made up largely of faculty, that the Kansas Senate Ways and Means committee did not approve the bill that would
have docked state employee's 7.5 percent of their entire years pay for the final part of the 2011 fiscal year. The crowd erupted in applause.
"I was very pleased to be able to report that other than the opposite," Gray-Little said.
Edited by Samantha Collins
Lessons on love
Rose Maybud (left), played by Ashley Benes, receives a book that contains all the proper etiquette secrets for a woman seeking to be woofed from her aunt Dame Hannah (right), played by Sara Blakeslee, Thursday night at Robert Baustian Theatre in Murphy Hall. KU Opera presented "Ruddicore," or the Witch's Curse, a book by W.S. Gibert, which will continue to be performed until Jan. 29.
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