On Mother’s Day, Ebony Robinson felt like the happiest mother in the world.
Her oldest son, Robert McRae III, a former Fairfax basketball player, will graduate from Dartmouth next month. Daughter Elyjah, a former Fairfax volleyball player, is a junior at an Ivy League university. And the baby boy, Romello, who played football and basketball at Fairfax, simply chose the same school after turning down Harvard.
“It’s pretty amazing,” Robinson said of the fact that three children in New Hampshire attended the same school. “I never thought about it. I just didn’t.”
For those concerned about sibling rivalry, understand that the McRae children positively motivated each other in their efforts to outdo each other.
“It was more about competing with ourselves,” Romello said. ‘My brother was the star athlete for the family. When my sister started high school, she set a goal to get better grades than my brother. When I went to Fairfax, I had a legacy to live up to.”
Romello, 6-foot-4 and 180 pounds, played basketball for the Lions and joined the football team for the playoffs last season after his mother finally relented and let him play. He was the ball boy for ten weeks until Robinson relented.
“I expected him to be on the sidelines for just one game,” she said. “They should have lost in the play-offs.”
McRae caught a touchdown pass in the first playoff game and Fairfax went on to win the City Section Division II championship. He has the best grade point average of his siblings: 4.3, and has earned a Gates Scholarship that will help pay for his college tuition.
“From what I’ve learned, healthy competition is always a good thing,” he said. “We always congratulated each other on our successes, but always wanted to be the best.”
Robert was an All-City basketball player and played on the 2019 Lions’ City championship team. He played four years at Dartmouth. Romello won a city basketball title in 2022, but will likely try to make the Dartmouth football team as a walk-on with his mother’s blessing.
“I accepted it. Go ahead and give it a try,” she said.
Robinson, who works with at-risk youth, is a single parent with a “no excuses” attitude.
“As a single mother, and especially having two boys, I didn’t have much room for nonsense,” she said. “I have become very strict. I want you to do what I ask you. I don’t have the mental space to handle anything else.”
She made it clear what was most important in her family.
“Even though the kids might say I’m absolutely strict, I always show them unconditional love,” she said. “That love has taught them to love each other the same way. With unconditional love, you can only admire each other for their strength and not resent someone’s success.”
Three kids making it to the Ivy League is something few in the family could have ever imagined until Robert heard from a Princeton recruiter in high school, when my mother’s goal was, “I just want you to go to college for you get paid, because I can’t do that. pay for it.”
Robert, 22, is deciding whether to pursue a master’s degree after graduating next month or go to Wall Street to work. Elyjah, 21, is majoring in anthropology. Romello, 17, wants to become an engineer and hopes to borrow his brother’s warm coats to get through the New Hampshire winter. Mom will be home with the last of her children, 8-year-old daughter Ellyott.
“I’m a proud mom,” she said.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
