National Affairs: Robins Into Rogers

Early last September a plow-nosed man with a beard alighted from a bus at Whittier, in the Great Smoky Mountains, 60 mi. west of Asheville, N.C.Soon most of Whittier’s 287 inhabitants knew him by sight. He was affable and talkative, gave his name as Reynolds Rogers. He bought a pair of blue overalls, put on an old sweater and cap, cut himself a tall staff and began taking walks in the hills. He built a lookout in a tree on a knoll, a rude altar on another hillside. People living in the same boarding house with him understood he was prospecting for gold, came from “up Kentucky way.” Reynolds Rogers attended the County Republican convention, made speeches in which he said he was an intimate of Presidents Roosevelt and Hoover. He campaigned on behalf of the Republican ticket in a schoolhouse address, talked temperance to the Methodist Sunday School. On Armistice Day he delivered an 80-min. address. He always seemed to have money, banked at nearby Bryson City, took a weekly Florida newspaper. He promised his landlord’s pretty daughter that he would send her to college.

A red-headed youngster named Carl Byrd Fisher often took walks in the hills with Whittier’s stranger. In a rural magazine called Grit the boy saw a picture of Col. Raymond Robins, wealthy Chicago Prohibitor who had been strangely missing since he left New York Sept. 3 to lunch with his good friend President Hoover at the White House (TIME, Sept. 19). Grit readers were advised to notify Salmon Oliver Levinson, famed Chicago attorney, if they saw a man resembling the photograph. Last week Carl Fisher wrote Mr. Levinson that he suspected “Reynolds Rogers” was “your man.” Mr. Levinson turned the letter over to the Federal Prohibition Bureau which, at President Hoover’s order, had been hunting high & low for Col. Robins. Two days later two Dry agents arrived in Whittier, took Reynolds Rogers to his room, told him he was Raymond Robins.

Overnight most of the residents of Whittier recalled that they knew Col. Robins’ identity all the time. John C. Dreier. Col. Robins’ nephew, arrived from Manhattan, confirmed the identification. The 59-year-old Prohibitionist, wearing a two months’ growth of whiskers, clung desperately to his assumed character. He was taken to a sanatorium at Asheville to be treated for amnesia. Mrs. Robins arrived from Florida, reported her interview with her husband thus:

“I was with Col. Robins for a few moments. I spoke to him but he didn’t recognize me. … He didn’t say much. To a stranger there isn’t much to be said. He-told the doctor: ‘I don’t know this lady. She is thinking of somebody else.’ . . .”

She said she was positive her husband was not shamming.

Later Mrs. Robins was again brought into Col. Robins’ room. After few minutes he asked the doctor: “Do you say that this is my wife?” She gave him her hand. A change came over his face and he addressed her by her first name. After an exchange of greetings described as “emotional.” he said: “Doctor. I am Raymond Robins and this is my wife, Margaret Dreier Robins.” Late in the afternoon he was shaved, changed into his regular clothes, announced that he would remain at the sanatorium until “fully rested.” At Whittier it was discovered that Reynolds Rogers kept news clippings about the missing Raymond Robins—chairman of the Progressive National Convention in 1916, Red Cross relief administrator to Russia in 1917-18, Klondike gold hunter, longtime social worker, churchman and Prohibition crusader. The establishing of his whereabouts last week only heightened the mystery surrounding his disappearance. On Sept. 10, Mrs. Robins announced she was sure her husband had been killed by vengeful bootleggers. Month and a half later, two weeks after a visit to the White House from which the search was originally directed, she said she felt sure he would turn up “after the election.”