Robertson, Donald James – Richard H. Keenan Funeral Home

Fairport – 0n December 22, 2019 at age 80. Predeceased by his mother, Kathleen Thompson Robertson; father Donald Mac Robertson; sister Phyllis Klos; brother in law, Donald Bramer. Survived by his loving wife, Beverly (Bramer) Robertson; children, Kenneth Robertson, David Robertson; sisters, Alice Robertson, Marsha Whitney and Marty Huff; and cousin Glenda Henderson. Don was a smart kid and was known as “The Professor” growing up. He was an electrical engineering graduate of RIT and North Eastern Universities. He worked for Xerox and retired after 32 years of service. He was avid outdoorsman and expert canoeist. He spent much of his time in the woods hunting and going on long canoe camping trips with friends and family.

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Don was born in Gouverneur, NY to Donald M. Robertson and Kathleen Thomson Robertson on September 30^th, 1939. He and his family lived in Syracuse, NY during the war years. The family later moved to Star Lake, NY a small town in the north eastern Adirondacks where Don spent most of his youth. Don had four sisters Phyllis, Alice, Marsha and Marty.

Don was a smart kid known as “the professor” growing up. When he was in high school, he won second place in a state science fair for building a two-way radio based upon his own design using only electrical theory textbooks as a guide. He designed and constructed a helmet diving suit like those used for deep sea diving and he and his friends used it in Star Lake (loads of summer fun).

When Don was a teenager he worked as wait staff at the Star Lake Hotel and occasionally guided for hunters and anglers. He bragged about getting to meet and work with some of the well-known Adirondack guides of the time.

After he graduated from high school, he attended RIT’s Co-op program and majored in Electrical Engineering.

He met his wife to be, Beverly through his brother in law Don Bramer who worked with him at General Railway Signal where Don did his undergraduate co-op.

After graduating from RIT Don went on to obtain a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Northeastern University in Boston. His youngest son, David also went to graduate school at Northeastern also for Electrical Engineering. Don’s oldest son, Ken was born in Waltham, MA.

Don and his family moved back to Rochester, NY where Beverly, his wife grew up. He was hired by XEROX and worked there his entire career and retired after 32 years. At Xerox he worked mostly in research and development for the advancement photo copier and high-speed printer technology. His roles at Xerox were Electrical Engineer, Materials Scientist and Physicist.

Don loved the woods and started the family out early camping and backpacking.

Don took the family backpacking in the Cranberry Lake Region near where he grew up. Most memorable were the overnight treks to High Falls which were difficult for the young family, but he powered them through and then there were the encounters with the black flies …… oh no the blackflies.

The family had many adventures campground camping traveling throughout the Adirondacks, the Thousand Islands, Acadia National Park, Canada, Novia Scotia and Florida.

Anybody who knew Don well, knew he loved hunting and canoeing. They were his passions in life. Don bought a canoe for the family when the boys were in their early teens. They used the canoe regularly for day trips in the Adirondacks and Thousand Islands. This soon led to overnight camping trips by canoe to Cranberry Lake, Racquet Lake, Forked Lake, Stillwater Reservoir and others in the Adirondacks. He would go on these trips with his boys, his wife or his buddies Jim Neyhart, Al Denim and Mike Omeluck.

Don loved canoeing and always looked for more and more challenge. These weekend camping trips soon evolved into much more once his boys turned college age. Don, Dave and Ken would go on these long canoe trips in Canada (the locals would call it “going into the bush”). Don would plan seven to ten-day canoe trips to Algonquin Provincial Park, Temagami, Quebec among others. These trips were challenging. A typical day would be breaking camp, paddling 15-20 miles walking 2-4 miles with a canoe on your back, making camp and doing it all over again the next day. These trips were real wilderness trips. Often you had to drive 40-60 miles on dirt roads just to get to the trail heads. Don’s most challenging canoe trips were paddling the north shore of Lake Superior (big water with lots of rough weather challenges) and the Allagash River (white water) in Maine.

Don’s other big passion was white tailed deer hunting. He would gun hunt as a kid, but his interest turned to bow hunting early in his adult life. He was very successful bow hunting Rattle Snake Hill and at his property in Dansville NY. He was a crack shot and would often take squirrels when the deer traffic was slow. Don would not do anything the easy way. He preferred primitive firearms. He built his own flintlock rifle (not from a kit) and used it to take many deer off the hill in Prattsburgh, NY.

Don had a poem that he found appropriate to describe how he felt at the end of life. It was Requiem by Robert Louis Stevenson. We think Don was the hunter home from the hill.

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie,
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be,
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill

We will miss Don.

My father and I get together to bow hunt in Dansville every year. We have been doing this for 30 years. This past fall my father admitted to me that he thought he was coming to the end of the line (he called it “the end of the string”). He said to me that a lot of people he has known in the same situation ask “why is this happening to me I am getting cheated?” My father said that this wasn’t him. He said that he felt that he lived a full life, a long life and a great life. He was proud of his career at Xerox and he loved all of the adventures he had with my mom, Dave, me and his good friends.

We spent hours in his sitting around in his camper that last trip reliving those adventures. I will share one of them with you now.

One summer we took a canoe camping trip to Raquette Lake. I don’t know exactly what year this was but I am sure I was near college age and my father was in his 40s. We crossed Raquette Lake and arrived at Camp WingADing, a primitive site with a bench and some stumps for sitting and laying out gear. We realized that we had forgot to bring butter, coffee and the evening meal for the first night. Dad wasn’t too happy, but he liked to overcome problems. We caught some perch and rock bass that day resolving the problem of the evening meal. My father loved pancakes for breakfast and wasn’t sure how to cook them without butter. He tried heating up some peanut butter in the frying pan to get some of the oil out. That did not work. In the end we used some of the oil leftover from cooking fish for the pancakes. I remember the pancakes tasted a little off. That day we started out a challenging day trip. We paddled up the Utawanna, across Eagle and Blue Mountain lakes. We wanted to do more, so we walked up the road to the Blue Mountain Trail Head. Along side the road on the other side of the guard rail we spotted an almost empty jar of instant coffee. Third problem solved. I asked my father if he had planted the jar of coffee and he swears no. We climbed to the peak of Blue Mountain. We were proud of our accomplishment, but my father was a little disappointed when he saw and elderly couple and their little poodle had made it to the top. We climbed down and somewhat beat took a nap on the hotel beach on the shore of Blue Mountain Lake. We overslept. We got going and paddled back in a hurry. We paddled the last length of the Utawanna in the dark. We got royally lost on Raquette lake and spent hours trying to find Camp WingADing. A park ranger found us a scolded us for being out on the lake in the dark with no lights other than flash lights. He pointed us in the right direction, and we found camp around midnight, what an adventure!

What I will remember most about my dad is his mental toughness. Unlike the others he often chose the hard way. Everyone used shot guns during regular deer season. Not Dad. He made his own flint lock rifle, his design, not from a kit and used it for deer hunting once bow season was over. The two days after Thanksgiving we would wake up at 4 AM. Dad would drive down to Prattsburg while I slept. Once we got there, we had to climb a big 600 ft hill. Easy for me but not so easy for dad especially when he was in his early sixties. He powered through with no complaints. Dad had a favorite spot on the top of the hill next to a pond. He would stand still for hours always keeping his gun upright and powder protected from snow and rain. Not easy to do. We would meet for lunch. I would show up freezing cold and tired and Dad would be there with hot chocolate and coffee ready on his pack stove. The cold didn’t seem to phase him and if it did, he never showed it. He would walk down by flashlight sometimes dragging a deer but never wasting a minute of daylight for the hunt. He was tough, he was an iron man.

The last big canoe trip was the Petawawa in Algonquin Provincial Park. All previous canoe trips were big adventures and we were quite successful. This trip was an adventure but turned out to be anything but successful. That year the Petawawa was low, we spent more time on foot than we did in the canoe. We were days behind schedule. We got to a section of whitewater near the midpoint of the trip. We swamped the canoe and lost all the gear downstream and got the canoe caught on a submerged log. This was late September and we both spent 45 minutes in the cold water getting the canoe freed and retrieving the gear. My father wanted to continue down the flow, but I was spooked and a little hypothermic. We were in a small canyon, so we had the choice of getting back in the water or climbing 100 ft up to an old railroad bed. We ended up climbing up to the railroad bed hauling the gear and the canoe by rope. The next day tired and beat we decided to bug out. We hitched a ride on a logging truck to the Algonquin Radio Telescope Observatory where they had a phone. The outfitters we used drove almost 100 miles to get us. My father was turning 60 years old and it was probably his last big Canada trip. We failed the mission and I thought he would be so disappointed. He wasn’t. He said that we rose to the challenge and met our limitations and that was a great way to finish. What a great outlook on life.

I will miss him. He was a good man, a great father and the best example.