That first day at the Baltimore School for the Arts, I never would have guessed that she and I would become friends.

“This school isn’t like ‘Fame,’ you know,” the cool upperclass art student said to me, narrowing her eyes in disdain.

I was a sophomore transfer student in the fall of 1982. The hit movie had come out two years before, and BSA was not much older, having been founded the year before that. I was in the basement cafeteria with a group of other new students, some of whom were singing loudly and dancing.

The older kids who’d been there since the school’s recent founding had no patience for the newbies who dreamed of going to the “Fame” high school. Not to mention, we were annoying a group of the visual arts students, who generally found the dance and theater students to be insufferable anyway

This was my inauspicious first meeting with Robin, who would become one of my closest and dearest friends for 42 years and counting.

Fun Facts About Robin

• Robin’s father was the respected artist James Earl Reid, who was one of the founding teachers in the visual arts department at BSA.. Fun Fact: Robin helped her father and worked closely with him while she was in high school–she crafted the gardenias for his famous Billie Holiday statue in Baltimore.

Billie Holiday Statue by James Earl Reid

• Robin has a BFA in Visual Arts from the Pratt Institute, where she met many lifelong friends. After college, she worked at Pearl Paint and a few stores in SOHO, before landing a job at the Guggenheim. She once got me a job at a store in SOHO that she managed– and then patiently taught me how to wrap gifts for the customers, because I was all thumbs at it.

Robin is a huge support for her family and friends. She was the Maid of Honor at our wedding and is our son Levi’s Godmother. After a successful career in NYC working for the Guggenheim Museum as a manager for Guest Services, she moved back to Baltimore to be closer to her mom and other family members.

Yes, we look very serious. It was the first and only time I’ve ever seen her in a skirt–she hates them, but wore it out of support for me lol.

• Robin has been working for the Baltimore non-profit, Second Chance, for 18 years, appraising art and antiques in her position as Pricing Manager. She loves her job, but her hourly pay is so low there that she has often worked 50 and even 60 hour weeks to make ends meet. Robin is close with many of her coworkers and has continued to work part-time throughout her current health crisis. Unfortunately, now that her chemotherapy has begun, she is too sick to work at all. Luckily, her hospital financial aid office has helped fast-track her for full disability. Hopefully that will be approved soon and will help her with food and housing during this crisis.

Robin has an infectious laugh. If you’re going to a funny movie, take Robin with you, and it will seem a million times funnier. Also if you’re going to a “Lord of the Rings” movie, take Robin. She read all the books and can explain anything you didn’t understand. Honestly, if you’re going to see any movie, just invite Robin.

A Crisis of Epic Proportions

Around Christmas last year, Robin began to feel sick.. At that time she was trying some new medications to help bring her diabetes under better control, and she believed she was experiencing negative side effects from the new meds. Unfortunately, her health got worse and worse.

Here’s What’s Going On

• In February 2024, Robin was brought to the ER for blood clots in her leg and a pulminary embolism. Since that time, her doctors have struggled to stablize her health, and she has needed to return to the emergency room and be admitted to the hospital several times. To give you an idea of the severity of her health situation– at one point, Robin had lost so much blood that she required 4 blood transfusions to stabliize her, and she wound up being in the hospital for about a month.

Her doctors have diagnosed Robin with both Stage 3 kidney disease and Stage 4 cancer, which has returned after it was surgically removed five years ago, and has spread.to other parts of her body. While the cancer is inoperable, it appears to be growing slowly, and her doctors are optimistic that they can succcessfully treat it with chemotherapy and other new medicines. She was treated for her kidney disease first and needed to wait for her kidneys to heal before beginning chemotherapy treatments. She began chemotherapy treatments in mid April.

Unfortunately, in addition to her health crisis, Robin also needs to move out of the home where she has been living for the last couple of years. Robin's father passed away in 2021 and she moved back into her childhood home to care for another elderly relative, settle her father’s estate and preserve his art work for the future. That situation will be coming to an end very soon, and Robin will need help moving into a new place so that she can have a safe place to heal and rest from her cancer treatments.

The health insurance that Robin receives through her employment is not enough to cover her burgeoning healthcare costs. She pursues healthcare grants and other public funding to mitigate the costs, but these funds are still not enough to cover the costs of her treatment.. Robin’s medical bills for her hospitalizations and kidney treatments from the last few months come to $85,000 that is not covered by her insurance! They also denied coverage for any of her chemotherapy treatments, so her chemotherapy was postponed for a week, while her oncologist successfully applied to the pharmaceutical companies to donate chemotherapy medications to her.

Robin is a private person, and, like many of us, she’s extremely uncomfortable about asking for help, even from close friends and family. But Robin knows that she’s in a fight for her life right now, and she needs all of the support she can get, so she’s allowed me to start reaching out to let folks know about her situation.

I’ve started this fundraiser to raise some much needed funding to help pay for her recent hospitalizations, kidney disease and cancer treatments, transportation for doctor visits and other living expenses.

But I’m also reaching out to ask for other kinds of support too! I realize that some folks simply don’t have any extra money to spare. If you can’t donate funds, I hope you will consider helping Robin in other ways.

Ways You Can Help

Transportation

• If you live in Maryland and drive, you could drive Robin to one of her appointments. Most of them are at Mercy Hospital, but she has to have chemo at a place near White Marsh.
• If you don’t live nearby or can’t drive, you could donate to Robin’s Uber account. The most expensive ride she needs to take is for her chemo treatments, which cost about $85 round trip. My family paid for the first one, and she took her mom with her for the 6-hour treatment.

Moving

• Robin has received the eviction notice for the house and will need help moving to a new place. It is unclear when this will happen, as she is still waiting for her full disability to come through, so that she will have access to housing. When it does, help would be much appreciated.
• Temporary storage and assistance preserving her father James Earl Reid’s art work. I hope some of our friends from the Baltimore School for the Arts will step up to help with this.

Friendship and Emotional Support

• Even if you live far away, can’t donate or can’t help in other ways, I encourage you to reach out to Robin to talk and laugh about old times. It helps Robin so much to feel normal and to NOT think about her health all the time.
• If you like to cook, a home-cooked meal would always be appreciated.
• If you have a special skill that you think might help, for example, if you’re a masseuse or a nutritionist or knowledgeable about local services that might be available, or anything like that, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Pray

• In recent years, Robin has begun attending church and has found much comfort there. If you’re a praying person, please pray for her.

If you think you might be able to help Robin during this time with rides, home-cooked meals, or other support, please reach out to us by leaving a message here or by contacting either one of us directly. (Go Fund Me doesn't allow me to share our direct contact info here.)

One of the things I love the most about Robin, is that, no matter how bad things get, she can always find something funny about it, and make you laugh about it. Even though she’s going through an extremely scary and difficult experience, It helps her to feel more “normal” to talk and joke about it with friends.

I hope this message reaches all of Robin’s friends near and far, including those who she’s lost touch with over the years. And if you don’t know Robin personally, but are an alum of the Baltimore School for the Arts or the Pratt Institute or studied under Robin’s father, I hope you will consider donating to help out a fellow artist. Your prayers are also much appreciated.

Much love and thanks,

Amy Nead Emke

Baltimore School for the Arts, Class of 1985