Early Years and Service As An Educator
Robert Tobin was the second of seven children born to Nat Tobin and his wife, Jane Patterson (1894–1982), in Louisiana's Bienville Parish village of Lucky. The family moved to Arcadia, the parish seat, so that the Tobin children could obtain a better education. Young Robert graduated from a black school in Arcadia, where he met his future wife, Thelma McCoy. At the time of his death, the couple had been married for seventy-six years and had outlived their daughter.
A World War II veteran of the 78th United States Army Signal Corps, Tobin was honorably discharged with the rank of technical sergeant and remained a life member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Studying at Louisiana's Southern University in Baton Rouge, a historically black institution of higher learning, and graduating with a major in science and a minor in mathematics, he subsequently attended California's Stanford University in Palo Alto, from which he obtained a master of science degree in science and secondary school supervision. He then entered the teaching profession at Castor Elementary School in the Bienville Parish village of Castor, later becoming principal of the school and subsequently transferring, at the invitation of his friend and mentor, Wilbur Leon Hayes, to the then-all-black Webster High School in Minden, where he served as a classroom teacher, assistant principal and principal. Five years after his retirement in 1970 from the field of education, the school was consolidated with the previously white Minden High School.
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