Inez Callaway Robb's Favorite Aunt
The late Inez Callaway Robb (1900-1979), a charter member of the Callaway Family Association, was a nationally known syndicated columnist. She returned every summer to Nampa, Idaho, to spend some time with her "beloved Aunt Kit." The following article was written by Earl Bule in his column "They Tell Me," for the Sun Telegram in San Bernadino, California. It is dated August 2, 1959.
INEZ CALLAWAY ROBB'S FAVORITE AUNT
I called on Inez Robb's Aunt Kit today, and a more charming little lady you've never met.
She is the aunt who cooks calves' brains and eggs for Inez when she comes back to Idaho every year. She also bakes a mean batch of salt-rising bread as you know if you read Inez' column in the Sun-Telegram - and who doesn't?
Aunt Kit, who lives alone in a little white cottage set in a garden of flowers is Mrs. Kittie Lee Hedden. She was born in Idaho and has lived here all of her life. She wouldn't have had it any other way, she tells you. Aunt Kit is "a gay old gal," who wonders what "the neighbors think about it all," but doesn't care. She's past 85 and, to her, age is just a figure of speech.
She is one of Inez' two aunts to whom the columnist's visits back home are the greatest things in their lives. The other is Aunt Kit's sister, Mrs. Nellie Sinsel of Boise. She is the one that smokes.
It was a Sunday afternoon and we talked for an hour - and you know about whom - Inez. No, she didn't exactly raise Inez, Aunt Kit said, but she added with a fierce note of pride, "we all had a hand in it."
Inez Callaway Robb is, in many newspapermen's books, the top woman reporter in the business who took up writing a column after a spectacular career as a writer of news wherever news broke - anywhere in the world. But hers was a modest beginning as a kid reporter right out of high school.
She started on the Caldwell, Idaho, Tribune and then moved on to the Idaho Statesman in Boise, where, Aunt Kit will tell you, "they asked her to do an awful thing. One winter night," she recalls, "there was a nasty murder out on the highway and I'll be darned if they didn't send that girl out to cover that murder." (Inez might tell that it was her biggest thrill.)
Inez, "always a good girl who wanted to know about her business," left the Boise newspaper field to enroll at the University of Idaho at Moscow. You'll recall she returned to the University in June to deliver the commencement address to the 1959 class. And in the very front row sat Aunt Kit, who describes Inez' address in a word - "wonderful."
After two years in the University of Idaho, Inez attended the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri, from which she graduated. She went to work in Tulsa, Okla., where her sister, Cathryn McCune, is now a reporter. The sisters get together at least once a year in New York City, Aunt Kit tells you.
Now Inez might be in Russia one week (as she recently was), in Norway, in Monaco or in West Berlin - the aunts never know until they pick up the paper to read her column. And her husband, J. Addison Robb, a New York insurance executive, doesn't know much more, Aunt Kit says.
"Why, Inez has the grandest husband in the world," she said. "If he were not, he would have left that girl years ago. She's gone for a month at a time - all over the world - and he stays home waiting for her. He's a grand husband. When he comes out here with Inez, he warns me that if there isn't fried chicken on the table, he'll leave and go downtown to eat. The last time he was here, we had chicken every meal and I even packed a box of it for him to eat on the way home.
Aunt Kit smiles when you ask her if she is one of the Callaways who Inez wrote "raised her stright-laced." They all told her things she would need to know in life, Aunt Kit recalls, and "she was always a good girl - a perfect one."
Inez never got above her family, the Aunt says proudly, no matter what her honors were. And she still comes back home every year to see Nellie and Kit. What's more, Inez has had both of her Aunts as her guests in New York - for a whole month too, Aunt Kit recalls.
Had it not been for Inez' deep love for Idaho we might have had her for a Californian, Aunt Kit said. When her parents, Abner and Ada Callaway, moved to California to set up a cattle ranch at Corning, Inez flatly refused to go and lived with the aunts until her parents, their farm damaged by floods, came back to Idaho.
Aunt Kit is the kind of person you would like to have as a neighbor, Spry and sharp. She knows what is going on.
As a girl, she recalled, she used to go over to Wyoming to visit her brother on his ranch. The cowboys driving their herds out of the Northwest to the railroad would stop in the flats near the ranch.
"And nowadays," she said, "when I watch those westerns on television and they show those cowboys to be rough, tough men, I get so mad I could throw the darned thing out the window. Why those cowboys were nice young gentlemen in the West as I knew it. And that was years ago, too."
As I rose to leave, Aunt Kit's conversation turned back to Inez. "Had I read an article Inez wrote in the Cosmopolitan Magazine a few years ago?" she asked. It was "The White Glove." In the article, Aunt Kit said, Inez gave credit to her grandmother, Mary Jane Callaway, for much of her success in life. It was Grandmother Callaway who told Inez to "always wear the best you've got; keep whatever you wear neat and clean; be sure to keep your shoes polished and always wear white gloves."
"Inez keeps a stack of white gloves a foot high." Aunt Kit said, "She's never without a pair."
"She's still a Callaway," the happy little old lady said, as I stepped off the porch.
The above article was originally published in the 1983 CFA Journal.
Editor's Note - Inez Robb received the Headliner Award from the Association for Women in Communication in 1943 as a War Correspondent for the International News Service. Since the award was created in 1939, the Association for Women in Communications has presented over 200 distinguished professional members with the Headliner Award to recognize their outstanding achievements.
Inez Callaway Robb's family line of descent:
Joseph Callaway
William Callaway
Charles Callaway
James Richard Callaway
Abner Early Callaway
Abner Kenton Callaway
Inez Early Callaway Robb
I called on Inez Robb's Aunt Kit today, and a more charming little lady you've never met.She is the aunt who cooks calves' brains and eggs for Inez when she comes back to Idaho every year. She also bakes a mean batch of salt-rising bread as you know if you read Inez' column in the Sun-Telegram - and who doesn't?
Aunt Kit, who lives alone in a little white cottage set in a garden of flowers is Mrs. Kittie Lee Hedden. She was born in Idaho and has lived here all of her life. She wouldn't have had it any other way, she tells you. Aunt Kit is "a gay old gal," who wonders what "the neighbors think about it all," but doesn't care. She's past 85 and, to her, age is just a figure of speech.
She is one of Inez' two aunts to whom the columnist's visits back home are the greatest things in their lives. The other is Aunt Kit's sister, Mrs. Nellie Sinsel of Boise. She is the one that smokes.
It was a Sunday afternoon and we talked for an hour - and you know about whom - Inez. No, she didn't exactly raise Inez, Aunt Kit said, but she added with a fierce note of pride, "we all had a hand in it."
Inez Callaway Robb is, in many newspapermen's books, the top woman reporter in the business who took up writing a column after a spectacular career as a writer of news wherever news broke - anywhere in the world. But hers was a modest beginning as a kid reporter right out of high school.
She started on the Caldwell, Idaho, Tribune and then moved on to the Idaho Statesman in Boise, where, Aunt Kit will tell you, "they asked her to do an awful thing. One winter night," she recalls, "there was a nasty murder out on the highway and I'll be darned if they didn't send that girl out to cover that murder." (Inez might tell that it was her biggest thrill.)
Inez, "always a good girl who wanted to know about her business," left the Boise newspaper field to enroll at the University of Idaho at Moscow. You'll recall she returned to the University in June to deliver the commencement address to the 1959 class. And in the very front row sat Aunt Kit, who describes Inez' address in a word - "wonderful."
After two years in the University of Idaho, Inez attended the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri, from which she graduated. She went to work in Tulsa, Okla., where her sister, Cathryn McCune, is now a reporter. The sisters get together at least once a year in New York City, Aunt Kit tells you.
Now Inez might be in Russia one week (as she recently was), in Norway, in Monaco or in West Berlin - the aunts never know until they pick up the paper to read her column. And her husband, J. Addison Robb, a New York insurance executive, doesn't know much more, Aunt Kit says.
"Why, Inez has the grandest husband in the world," she said. "If he were not, he would have left that girl years ago. She's gone for a month at a time - all over the world - and he stays home waiting for her. He's a grand husband. When he comes out here with Inez, he warns me that if there isn't fried chicken on the table, he'll leave and go downtown to eat. The last time he was here, we had chicken every meal and I even packed a box of it for him to eat on the way home.
Aunt Kit smiles when you ask her if she is one of the Callaways who Inez wrote "raised her stright-laced." They all told her things she would need to know in life, Aunt Kit recalls, and "she was always a good girl - a perfect one."
Inez never got above her family, the Aunt says proudly, no matter what her honors were. And she still comes back home every year to see Nellie and Kit. What's more, Inez has had both of her Aunts as her guests in New York - for a whole month too, Aunt Kit recalls.
Had it not been for Inez' deep love for Idaho we might have had her for a Californian, Aunt Kit said. When her parents, Abner and Ada Callaway, moved to California to set up a cattle ranch at Corning, Inez flatly refused to go and lived with the aunts until her parents, their farm damaged by floods, came back to Idaho.
Aunt Kit is the kind of person you would like to have as a neighbor, Spry and sharp. She knows what is going on.
As a girl, she recalled, she used to go over to Wyoming to visit her brother on his ranch. The cowboys driving their herds out of the Northwest to the railroad would stop in the flats near the ranch.
"And nowadays," she said, "when I watch those westerns on television and they show those cowboys to be rough, tough men, I get so mad I could throw the darned thing out the window. Why those cowboys were nice young gentlemen in the West as I knew it. And that was years ago, too."
As I rose to leave, Aunt Kit's conversation turned back to Inez. "Had I read an article Inez wrote in the Cosmopolitan Magazine a few years ago?" she asked. It was "The White Glove." In the article, Aunt Kit said, Inez gave credit to her grandmother, Mary Jane Callaway, for much of her success in life. It was Grandmother Callaway who told Inez to "always wear the best you've got; keep whatever you wear neat and clean; be sure to keep your shoes polished and always wear white gloves."
"Inez keeps a stack of white gloves a foot high." Aunt Kit said, "She's never without a pair."
"She's still a Callaway," the happy little old lady said, as I stepped off the porch.
The above article was originally published in the 1983 CFA Journal.
Editor's Note - Inez Robb received the Headliner Award from the Association for Women in Communication in 1943 as a War Correspondent for the International News Service. Since the award was created in 1939, the Association for Women in Communications has presented over 200 distinguished professional members with the Headliner Award to recognize their outstanding achievements.
Inez Callaway Robb's family line of descent:
Joseph Callaway
William Callaway
Charles Callaway
James Richard Callaway
Abner Early Callaway
Abner Kenton Callaway
Inez Early Callaway Robb
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