Shelter Island Reporter Obituary: Amy C. Robertson
Amy C. Robertson of Silver Spring, Maryland, whose grandfather Walter “Robbie” Collin Robertson Sr. (1890-1979) had a summer residence on Big Ram Island’s Tuthill Drive, died November 5, 2015 after a 15-month struggle with cancer.
The daughter of Theodore Royen Robertson (1923-1998), a years-long volunteer with the Shelter Island Emergency Ambulance Service and a realtor with Cook Pony Farm, and Helen Catherine “Cathy” (Perrins) Robertson, Amy grew up in Philadelphia. She attended Plymouth Meeting Elementary School and Germantown Friends High School from which she graduated in 1969.
Her love for the Island developed and grew during holidays and summers spent here fishing and swimming in Coecles Harbor, exploring Hay Beach and Reel Point, playing with next door neighbors, including Angela, Eugene and Iris Van Rynbach, and spending time with her family, grandparents and other relatives.
After receiving an undergraduate degree in 1974 in theatre design from Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri, Amy traveled along the East Coast as Barksdale Studio’s first woman school photographer. Subsequently, she attended Catholic University in Washington, D.C., where she received a master’s degree in social work in 1978.
Professionally, she worked at Circle Terrace Hospital’s inpatient alcoholism treatment program in Arlington, Virginia, before starting a private practice in addictions treatment, first in Washington, D.C., and then Kensington, Maryland. Later she expanded her practice to include couples work as an Imago-trained therapist and was active in the Mid-Atlantic Association for Imago Relationship Therapists.
Married to Minnesota native Dennis Allen Johnson on May 12, 1984, the couple moved from Washington, D.C. to Silver Spring where they had two children, Trevor Robertson Johnson and Victoria “Tory” Catherine Johnson.
In addition to her family, career and love for Shelter Island, Amy enjoyed musicals, genealogy, photography, British history and dogs — her childhood English springer spaniel, Tally, and later Mac, her golden retriever, and Bear, her Chesapeake Bay retriever — all enjoyed swimming on the Island as much as Amy.
Treated for breast cancer in 2007, she remained in remission until July 2014 when she was diagnosed with carcinoma of unknown primary and in September 2015 with carcinomatosis meningitis. She is survived by her husband, Dennis, and mother, Cathy, both of Silver Spring; son Trevor of New Haven, Connecticut, and daughter Tory, of Washington, D.C.
Interment will be at the Emily French Memorial Cemetery on the Island. The family requests gifts in her memory be sent to Friends of Mashomack Preserve, P.O. Box 850, Shelter Island, NY 11964 or to the Peconic Land Trust at peconiclandtrust.org/donate.
