Community support has lasting effects

Life can change in the blink of an eye whether you’re ready for it or not. Jann Robinson, a former Mountain Brook resident, knows that firsthand. 

In 2006, Robinson and her family were just getting settled in the Crestline community when her husband, Dave Robinson, was diagnosed with lymphoma. That August he was admitted to the hospital. Pregnant with her sixth child, Jann Robinson was overwhelmed to say the least. 

“At that time, my head was in 1,000 places,” she said. “My brain was flipped.”

After hearing about what Jann Robinson and her family were going through, it wasn’t long before neighbors created the Friends of Dave Robinson.

“They had just moved in to the house, and Dave was diagnosed,” said Pam Autrey. Autrey lived around the corner and had children who went to school together with Jann Robinson’s.

“We wanted to support them because we both own our own businesses, and we wanted to help,” said friend and neighbor Sheri Corey.

By reaching out to local residents, Corey and Autrey were able to collect enough donated goods to put on a huge, communitywide yard sale. Someone even donated a car.

“We raised $25,000 to $30,000 at garage sale prices. So that just tells you how much was donated,” Autrey said.

When Jann Robinson was able to bring her husband home, he saw the yard sale spread throughout the local church’s parking lot and how the community was helping his family.

“He was just knocked over,” Jann Robinson said.

Their support continued into Jann Robinson’s home, where friend Lisa Flake and her mother, of Caldwell-Flake interiors, worked with Reich Construction and other neighbors to help make everything feel like home during Dave Robinson’s absence.

“Their love and generosity really made an indelible impression on my children and gave them much hope in the midst of transition,” Jann Robison said.  “Lisa was a rock star.”

Because Jann Robinson spent so much time in the hospital with her husband, one of the first things that she said she missed was cooking for her family. To ensure that her children were still able to eat a "mom-cooked meal," her neighbors set up a calendar to make sure her family had a home-cooked meal every night, she said. 

Dave Robinson died at the end of October, but the support stayed. 

“I didn’t really get my head back until maybe July, August. I was functional, very functional, but it was not all there,” Jann Robinson said. “It was so nice to have that support system and the love and the protection for me [and my family] at the time.”

By 2009, the tolls of the economy crash had worn on Jann Robinson’s catering business.

“I started getting cancellations from holiday parties I had done for years,” she said. Eventually, she was without a job and was fighting to keep her and her home.

Once again the Friends of Dave Robinson stepped in to help with another community yard sale. “It wasn’t quite as big, but it was still good,” Corey said. 

Four years later, Jann Robinson caught a break when she won the CBS show “The Job,” granting her a position as assistant manager at the New York City restaurant The Palm. After two and a half years of traveling between New York and Birmingham, she returned home to her new husband and children, and settled down in Hoover. Today, she still looks back at all her friends in Mountain Brook did for her. 

“GoFundMe is nothing compared to what was done here,” Robinson said. “You cannot find a community like ours. There is something to be said for small towns.”