Sugar Ray Robinson in 1989. In 2006 he was featured on a commemorative stamp by the United States Postal Service. Robinson was born Walker Smith Jr. in Ailey, Georgia, to Walker Smith Sr. and Leila Hurst. Robinson was the youngest of three children; his eldest sister Marie was born in 1917 and his other sister Evelyn was born in 1919. His father was a cotton, peanut, and corn farmer in Georgia, who moved the family to Detroit where he initially found work in construction. According to Robinson, Smith Sr. later worked two jobs to support his family—cement mixer and sewer worker. "He had
Gertrude Robinson Smith New York Philharmonic as its main attraction. Gertrude Robinson Smith, a formidable local philanthropist who campaigned for women’s welfare and reportedly threw a mean curveball, was the festival’s leading patron, and when the Philharmonic lost interest Smith turned instead to Koussevitzky, who seized on her notion that the enterprise could become an American version of the Salzburg Festival". Ambitious and bold, Smith's vision of an annual summer music festival comparable to the Salzburg Festival, has met and exceeded expectations from those first Depression era Berkshire summers. In 1966 the festival was expanded to include a highly regarded instructional program for