Adele Robey · 1995 Honoree

On a slow day, Adele Robey designs, draws, thinks hard, discusses, raises money, talks plays, walks the dog, shepherds children, sings alto, pouts “When I say I’m in love, you’d best buh-leeve I’m in LOVE L-U-V”—and does some good for someone in the Capitol Hill community. During her twenty years here, certainly all Hill residents have been touched by her personally or by the beautifully-designed printed pieces which trumpet the richness of our neighborhood and the depth of Adele’s generosity and commitment to that neighborhood all at the same time.

In 1974, Adele Passaglia married Bruce Robey; in 1975, they moved to—and took to Capitol Hill; in 1976, they became parents to Julia. The rest is history. An accomplished graphic artist, Adele left a more secure working environment to open Robey Graphics, and later its successor Phoenix Graphics. Her specialty is publication and logo design, and those designs are visible all over the Hill—in the The Food Pages, in advertisements and brochures from Moonblossoms and Snow, Antiques on the Hill, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, The Folger Shakespeare Library, and more. She has other Capitol Hill clients, however—special clients with whom no money is ever exchanged. Her design work for the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, CHAMPS, Friendship House, Capitol Hill Day School, Capitol Hill Cluster Schools, Edmond Burke School, Christ Church, the Capitol Hill Group Ministry, St. Mark’s Players and countless others has been, quite simply, Adele’s gift.

Her contributions are not limited to the visual arts. Capitol Hill’s music and theatre have been a gift to her, and she has returned it a hundred fold. Her long, full, and productive association with CHAW began with the three-Robey production of Oliver in 1984—Adele and Julia on the stage, Bruce and his horn in the pit. It has continued through stints on the board, participation in dozens of classes, and appearances in almost two dozen plays, to her current role as producer of CHAW’s Theatre Alliance and therefore producer of the recent critically acclaimed—and financially successful!—production of “The Wiz—A Capitol Idea.”

And the hits just keep on comin’. In 1990 she, along with Parker Jayne, founded The Jaynettes: Vintage Music by Vintage Women, a group of four forty-ish women singing the fifty-ish music of rock and roll. The Jaynettes performed at fundraisers for a number of Hill organizations and in that process brought Capitol Hill parents, grand-parents, young children, and teen-agers together for singing, dancing and stomping Only Adele Robey could combine a yard of sequins and a sense of adventure with a sense of community.