Storyteller Bobbie Drobeck performs for kids at the 17th Annual Memphis Music and Heritage Festival at the Center for Southern Folklore Sept. 5, 2004.

Even sickness didn't dim storyteller's light

Librarian and educator brought culture alive

By Erin Sullivan MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL

April 22, 2005

She wasn't much on compliments. Bobbie Drobeck was warm and outgoing, but tough. She didn't like falseness.

The one compliment Bobbie allowed herself to accept was from a child. She had finished one of her storytelling shows, and the child walked up to her, studied her face and said:

Are you a child, too

Bobbie loved that. It meant she did her job. She had connected with the child so well he was confused.

She looked like a grandmother -- plump and soft with wrinkles and folds, white hair and glasses.

But she acted like a child when she told stories. Laughing, singing, jumping, digging in her black bag of puppets -- dragons and monkeys and alligators and rabbits -- making them come to life.

When friends read her obituary, they couldn't believe she was 77.

Even in the late fall, after cancer surgery removed three ribs, part of her chest and lung, she still visited schools with her black bag, telling stories for hours. When cancer filled her bones and fractured her shoulder, she reluctantly canceled shows.

Her love of reading, storytelling and imagination came from her grandmother. Bobbie was an only child whose father left when she was 9. Her mother and her grandparents raised her in Midtown. Her grandmother quoted Shakespeare and Bobbie could, too.

Bobbie wanted to be an actress but married a jazz musician and had four children. So she worked her passion into her life.

She was a librarian for 30 years and headed an outreach station in North Memphis. She brought the library to the children there -- a fun library, no hushing fingers, with field trips and puppets and African-American literature.

She hosted and produced a children's TV show called "Kid's Time" for the library. She visited young mothers in hospitals and urged them to read to their children. She studied the origins of oral storytelling and fought to keep the traditions alive.

She was a white lady telling African folk tales, an anachronism, her voice rhythmic, beckoning people to stop and sit around an ancient campfire with her and listen to some stories.

She never learned to drive and hauled her puppets on the bus or got rides from people.

She focused on the good things. A nice sunset. A warm breeze. A child's hug. She laughed a lot.

"She never got old," said her son, Bruce Drobeck. "She was ageless."

Bobbie died April 11. Her memorial service is 4 p.m. Tuesday at First Unitarian Church-The Church of the River. Memphis Funeral Home Poplar Chapel has charge.

Bobbie has two cedar chests stuffed with puppets. Her request was that her puppets and books go to fellow storytellers, so the tales will survive, the campfire still glowing.

-- Erin Sullivan: 529-5880