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
A'Lelia Walker named for Walker (Lelia Walker Robinson) after Italian tenor Enrico Caruso told her after a visit to the property that the newly built Irvington-on-Hudson mansion reminded him of the houses of his native country. She married three times: to John Robinson, a hotel waiter, from whom she separated about 1911 and whom she divorced in 1914; to Dr. Wiley Wilson in 1919; and to Dr. James Arthur Kennedy, in 1926, whom she divorced just a few months before her death in 1931. She had no biological children, but in 1912 she adopted Fairy Mae Bryant (1898–1945), who became known as