Jack Cecil Robertson's Obituary
Rev. Dr. Jack C. Robertson, whose life’s work spanned the continental United States as a medical
director serving the Indian Health Service and many cities, agencies and clinics, and then later in
life as an ordained Presbyterian minister, died March 9, 2025, after a lifetime of helping
marginalized people and communities seek health, justice and dignity. He was 94.
Jack was born Feb. 11, 1931, in Garkida, Nigeria, as the second child of Dr. Russell and Bertha Cecil
Robertson, who were serving as medical missionaries in Africa until 1933 when his father fell fatally
ill of yellow fever and he and his sister, Jayne, returned with their mother to the United States to be
raised by a single parent during the Depression.
Jack would follow his parents into a life of service. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, he met his future wife,
Catherine Cox, at College Hill Presbyterian Church, where they would marry Aug. 3, 1952. Jack
completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Tulsa, then earned his Doctor of Medicine
at the University of Chicago. Out of medical school, Jack embarked with Cathy on an adventurous
career in the U.S. Public Health Service, beginning with the Indian Health Service, serving Native
American communities from the Pacific Northwest and Alaska to the High Plains to the Carolinas to
Oklahoma and Arizona. In this journey, Jack and Cathy carried a growing family that would number
seven children.
Together, the family experienced the breadth of America’s panorama and its Native American
cultures, while Jack not only helped build healthy communities but led successful efforts to recruit
Native American doctors and medical professionals to help Native nations regain their identity and
autonomy.
From 1972 to 1975, Jack answered a call to serve as the director of health and welfare for the city of
Cleveland, Ohio, taking on a daunting task at a time when Cleveland’s collective health and pride
struggled to rise from the Rust Belt crisis and reach for a cleaner, more prosperous future.
Over the next decade, Jack would continue to serve communities of need, working for the welfare of
aging citizens in Dallas, Texas; overseeing some of California’s most challenged patients as the
director of Patton State Forensic Psychiatric Hospital in San Bernardino County; then serving lowincome Tulsa residents as medical director of the Morton Comprehensive Health Services clinic.
All along their life path, Jack and Cathy were steadfast in serving the many churches they joined as
they moved from town to town, singing tenor and soprano in the choir, volunteering, and Jack often
filling in at the pulpit providing the week’s sermon as a layperson. So it was not surprising that Jack,
in the mid-1980s, returned to school, earning a degree in Divinity from Brite Divinity School at Texas
Christian University, then was ordained as a Presbyterian minister.
Jack again went where there was need, helping churches that were without pastoral leadership, in
Oklahoma and Texas, and traveling between a group of small Presbyterian churches in Eastern
Oregon, working until he was nearly 90, finishing as the pastor of Bethany Presbyterian Church in
Dallas. Following his missionary parents before him, Jack’s model of a giving life, together with
Cathy, lives on in the lives of their seven children and will carry on for generations to come.
Jack was preceded in death by Cathy, after 67 years of marriage, in 2019. He is survived by his
children, daughter Beverly Patrick and her husband, Matt, daughter Michal Robertson, son Russell
Robertson whose wife Sue died in 2005, son John Robertson and his wife, Anqi, son David
Robertson and his wife, Ronda, son Joe Robertson and his wife, Amy, and daughter Lydia
Robertson. Jack and Cathy were further blessed with eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
A celebration of life will be held in Tulsa at College Hill Presbyterian Church on Saturday, August 2,
2025, on what would have been the weekend of Jack and Cathy’s 73rd wedding anniversary.
What’s your fondest memory of Jack?
What’s a lesson you learned from Jack?
Share a story where Jack's kindness touched your heart.
Describe a day with Jack you’ll never forget.
How did Jack make you smile?