William Archibald Robertson III was born Oct. 2, 1943, in at Flagler Hospital in St. Augustine Florida.

"My son is the fourth, and my grandson is the fifth. There were four of us living at one time, including my father," Robertson told the Review.

Bill Robertson II was a transplanted Chicagoan who grew up hard.

"My dad was born in Chicago in November of 1908," Robertson said. "He never finished high school. He had to quit school because his dad died. To quote him, he was the ‘dispensable son.’ His older brother was almost ready to graduate, so dad quit school to work, because somebody had to. He never went back to school, but he was a math guy. He loved numbers. He was a bookkeeper, he worked in statistics for the Chicago Cubs at one time. When he moved to St. Augustine and met my mother in the late 20s he was a bookkeeper at the local Ford dealer. He also did the bookkeeping for a small shrimping company. He worked on the boat as well, because it wasn’t a big enough job for him to be a specialist. He had to do some of everything."

His mother worked as a nurse.

"My mother’s name was Sarah Claudia Getzen," he shared. "She grew up in Newberry Florida, which is a very small town just west of Gainesville. Her dad was the country doctor. She graduated from high school, and actually graduated from what is now Florida State University. She had a degree in nursing, and planned to go ahead and become a doctor, but she and dad got married and started having children, and that pretty well zilched that. She worked as a nurse and taught nursing until late in her life."

Born in St. Augustine, Florida, job opportunities soon had the family on the move.

"We lived in St. Augustine until 1952, when my dad took a job with Gulf Life Insurance in Palatka, Florida. I went through the third grade in St. Augustine, then we moved to Palatka, about 40 miles away. We were there for a couple of years, and he was offered a job as a field auditor with Gulf Life, and we moved to Jacksonville. He traveled as an auditor until 1969," Robertson said.

"My mother worked as a nurse at a community agency in St. Augustine, and when we moved to Palatka she took a job at a small hospital," he said. "She was the only nurse on the night shift. When we moved to Jacksonville, she went to work at Duvall Medical Center, the big county hospital in Duvall County in those days. She taught nursing later on at Flarity Junior College and then Brewster-Duvall School of Nursing in Jacksonville.

"I have two brothers," he continued. "My older brother Bruce was 81 years old when he died in 2015. Interestingly enough, he was a Presbyterian minister. Bruce graduated from Florida, he graduated from Princeton, Union Seminary and Columbia Seminary in New York. He was the most educated Robinson I know. My younger brother, Charlie, turned 71 in February, and he is a University of Florida Graduate. He lives with his wife in St. Augustine."

Robertson said he still sees some of his school friends from time to time.

"I went to Orange Street Elementary School in St. Augustine until the third grade. Then we moved tom Palatka, and then to Jacksonville. I went to North Shore Elementary School, Kirby Smith Junior High School, and then graduated from Andrew Jackson High School in 1961. It was a big school. There were over 600 in my graduating class. I still have some friends from school. We may not talk often, but once in a while we’ll call, or email, or text or whatever. Sometimes when I go to Jacksonville to visit and I’ll make a point of looking up one of my old buddies. I’ve been out of high school now for 56 years."

His post high school education brought him to Tennessee for the first time.

"I moved to Nashville by myself when I was 18. They just kind of brought me up here and dumped me out," Robertson laughed. "I went to trade school, and learned how to operate typesetting machinery for printing, and learned to be a machinist. I had to work a year for a fellow who helped finance it for me, so I went back to Jacksonville.

"I had met Judy (his first wife) in Nashville, however, so I was destined to return. After a year I got my first vacation, and I went back to Nashville. I attended Belmont College in 1963, but it was a little more than I could afford. At that time UT had an extension center at the corner on 9th and Broadway. It was almost a full curriculum. I went at night. They had Vanderbilt professors, and Belmont professors and others coming to teach. I’ve been to Athens College, in Athens Alabama. It is no longer in existence. That’s what happens when you get old. Things start to disappear. I took Biblical Hebrew there. Also Moody Bible School. I’ve had a varied, interesting, and fairly broad-based education. Education is important, but all things being the same, I prefer common sense over formal education. It works when nothing else will. Common sense is never out of place," he said.

Judy was killed in a car crash in 1989, and Robertson was left a widower with nine children, the youngest four months of age.

"I met Judy when I lived in a boarding house 16th Avenue South in Nashville, which is now Music Row," Robertson told the Review. "This kid had a paper route in the neighborhood, and one day, out of the clear blue, this pretty girl was helping him. It turned out to be his sister Judy. Now, I’m not a ladies man, and never was. I’m a coward when it comes to girls. On the other hand, I’m not blind, brother, and she was a beautiful girl. So I spoke to her, and she didn’t speak, she just kind of looked away. About a week later she came again, so I stepped off the porch and introduced myself. I was rather impressed with my bravery.

"It took a while for her parents to let her go out with me, because they didn’t know me, I was from out of town. She was going to Peabody College, and on our first date, in order for me to take her to see a movie at Peabody, and we walked, because they weren’t going to let me put her in my car, We had to take her three little brothers with us. They showed the movie out on the big green outdoors. We saw ‘The King and I’ with Yul Brenner."

He remarried in 1990, and between he and his wife, Joyce, they grew their brood to the size of a small army.

"My wife Joyce, who I married in 1990 after her husband, a police officer, was killed in the line of duty, had two children, Amy, who has three children, Faith and her husband Josh Orcutt, who have three children, Levi, who lives in San Antonio, TX, and her youngest son John, who passed away in 2000.

"We have 11 children between us," he went on. "There are 28 grandchildren, and my eighth great grandchild is due this month. When you add all the spouses, that means we had 57 people at our house for Christmas last year. No aunts and uncles, or anybody else, just us and our children, and their children. It was very crowded. We don’t do it on Christmas Day. There’s just too many people. We usually get together a week or so before Christmas, and it’s a really good time. We eat together, we visit, we don’t exchange gifts. With 57 people that would get costly. We all get together maybe once during the summer as well. It’s just hard to get 50-some people together at one time."

And he can remember them all in one try.

"My son Bill IV is married to Michelle, and they live in Portland, TN," he informed. "They have two boys, Bill V and Jacob, who’s married to Mallory. They have a boy named Reece. My Daughter Claudia is married to Jeff Kelsey, who used to be a city policeman here. They live in McDaniels KY, where they boy’s ranch. He is also a sheriff’s deputy. They have three children, Sammy, Elana, and Judy Ann and her husband Corey, who live in Valdosta, GA. Then I’ve got Mary Ann, who is married to Darrell Chumley. They live in Auburntown. They have two boys, Tate and Garrett. There’s Steven and his wife Tracy, who live in Dixon with their children, Olivia and Luke. Next is Catherine, whom is married to Craig Hale. They live in Cannon County. They have four children, Kristin, Addison, Madelaine and Bradley. My daughter Jennifer is married to Nathan Hale, and they live in Johnson City. They have three children, Caroline, Audrey and Andrew. Then there’s Elizabeth, who’s married to Phil Smith. They have three children, Phillip, Matthew and Lillian. Next is Suzanne, married to Shaun Slager. They live here, and have two children, Grant and Lydia. Then Martha, who lives in Knoxville with her husband, Josh Howe,"

He said that while tragedy has struck his new family as well, they have soldiered on.

"Joyce and I have had one son to die. John died at 22 in Martinsville VA. He had pneumonia, and they found him dead on Father’s Day. John was a good boy, and was well on his way to becoming a good man. It was heartbreaking," he said.

"My older brother died in 2015. My parents are both gone. I’ve had some tragedy, and it is a reminder of the brevity of life, and how you can do whatever you want in your time here, but you have no control over two things, how you’re going to die, and when you’re going to die,"

He said preaching did not run in the family.

"Interestingly enough, our family never, ever went to church," he revealed. "I don’t ever remember, until I began to preach, my mother and dad ever going to church. Then it would only be on the rare occasions that they came to see me. I was grounded at home once in 61. I was out of high school, but my dad was still in charge, so I had been grounded. A friend asked me if I wanted to go to church with him. It was a good way to get out of the house, and they let me go, and I got saved. It was the third time I had been to church. The next week the church had an opening for a janitor, and they hired me. I did that until I went to school in 1962. When I got back from school, I went back to church there. I really felt in my heart that god was calling me to preach. I don’t know why, it’s one of those nebulous things that are hard to figure. You can’t put a button on it and say this is it. The sky didn’t part or anything like that, it was just a feeling. I preached for the first time in March 1963, 54 years ago now, and I was licensed to preach at North Jacksonville Baptist Church. When I moved back to Nashville at the end of 63, I began to attend Belmont Heights Baptist Church, where I was ultimately ordained in 1967. I’ve been doing it ever since.

"I started off at McEwen Tennessee, at Oak Grove Baptist Church, a little church of 40 people or so, way out in the sticks," he remembered. "After that I went to St. Mary’s Georgia, which was the biggest church I ever pastored. From there I went to Trinity, Alabama, then we spent seven years in northeast Ohio as church planters. That means you go in, you start visiting, you talk to people, and find out if there is any interest. It’s a flat start from nothing. I loved it. It was hard work, but I loved it. I guess I visited in thousands of homes. There weren’t many Southern Baptist churches in that area, We went up there with the Home Missions Board, and started two churches. We left there and went to Florida, and started Freedom Baptist church just outside of St. Augustine. We moved to Palatka for a very brief time, but left to come here in 1986."

His oldest son had a part in his coming to Smithville.

"My son Bill is a pretty good runner," Robertson shared. "He got a scholarship at Belmont. He met Nolan Turner’s son Johnathon there, and eventually found out that Elizabeth’s Chapel needed a pastor. We wrote a letter to Thurman Seber, who forwarded it to the pulpit committee, and we ended up here in July 1986. I’ve pastored eight churches now, and never had a problem. I’ve never been fired, never even been threatened to be fired. Elizabeth’s Chapel is the best church I’ve ever pastored by far. They spoiled me rotten. They were so good to me. We never had any trouble almost 30 years, and no blow ups between pastor and deacons or anything. That’s really tough to believe, but it’s true."

He said a letter of condolence brought him together with Joyce.

"Joyce’s husband died a couple of months after Judy," Robertson said. "I didn’t know her. I had never seen her. I had never heard of her. But I heard about her through a friend. I wrote her a cornball letter. I didn’t know what to say to that woman. Mostly I said that I was sorry about her husband, that my wife had died tragically too. I told her I was sad about it, and that I was going to pray for her. I didn’t even know her name, I just sent the letter to an address. Sort of a To Whom It May Concern thing. It wasn’t a love letter. I didn’t expect to hear back from her. Later that year I got a letter in the mail. From her. So we began to correspond, and we finally met each other the day after Christmas in 1989.

"She and her children were visiting her sister in Cleveland, and I went down there. We ate breakfast at Cracker Barrel, and spent the day together. They came back here, and the whole family spent the night with us. That was a crowd. The next day I took her on a tour of Smithville, and showed her the church, so she could see I wasn’t pulling her leg about the things I told her about myself. She went home, and I was so lonely. I will never forget, I was just broken. My heart had skipped a beat, and never caught back up. So I called her up and asked if I could come visit them on New Years Eve, and she said ‘sure.’ So I got somebody to preach for me that week, and I called up Boyd Cantrell, who was our deacon chairman, and told him I’d be out of town, I’m going to Virginia. He didn’t have any idea why. We enjoyed the weekend. She had a big house, and they gave me the entire basement. To make a long story short, I asked her to marry me in February. I was old, I was almost 47, and I didn’t have time to fool around. We got married in July 1990, and still are."

His new wife was a schoolteacher.

"Joyce taught school for 40 years, 20 in Virginia, and 20 more in DeKalb County," Robertson shared. "She still subs on a semi-regular basis. She’s a lot more educated than me too. I’m kind of the bonehead of the bunch when it comes to education."

Robertson said he is blessed with good kids.

"I guess I’ve been kind of a severe parent," he revealed. "I’ve been stern. I’ve disciplined them, and I probably still would if I could get away with it, but some of them are bigger than me now. I played with them, loved them, and we’ve had great times, but there was never a misunderstanding about who was the dad and who was the child. My grandchildren don’t even mess with me much, because they know it too.

"I hope that I’ve taught them to work hard. I’ve never been a sluggard. I’ve always worked hard. I hope I taught them to live with integrity, as I always have. I tried to lead by example. My reputation has never been besmirched by ‘stuff.’ I’m big on reputation. In the long run, as a pastor in particular, if I lose my reputation, I’ve lost just about everything. My history is gone. Anybody’s is when you come right down to it.

"I tried to teach them to be active members of the church and not just suckers. That’s not a very theological word, I know, but you get the point. I’ve always taught them that they need to be contributing citizens. They don’t need to be hangers on. The world doesn’t owe you one red cent, but you owe it, and have an obligation to be a part of it. You can look at my children and say it looks like they’re doing well. They are, and I think it’s partly because I expected them to. I didn’t expect them all to be members of MENSA, but I expected them to do well. And they have. I’m proud of them. Most all of them are college graduates. I’m the bumpkin of the family. I have the least education of anybody in my family, I guess. I still like to think I’m as smart as they are, just not as educated.

"The biggest think, I think, is, and they’ll tell you this, I did what I said.

"When I turned 70, they made a little book for me, and they all wrote seven things about me. Many of them were things like this: ‘If dad told you to do it, you knew that he had already done it that way. With the exception of a few times when it was out of my control, I’ve always done what I said I was going to do. That’s how I’d like to be remembered," he said.

Robertson said retirement has not given him a lot of time to slow down.

"When people ask me about retirement, I say there are pros and cons," Robertson joked. "The good is, the people I know here in town, know me, and they still seem to like me. They know that even though I’m not their pastor any more they can call me, and I’d do anything I could to help them. And I would. You know what the bad is? They know me, they like me and if they call me I’d do anything I could to help them. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

"Since retirement I’ve preached around a few places, I’ve preached at Salem in Liberty. I enjoyed that. I’ve been at First Baptist in Smithville for eight months as their interim. I told them I’d stay until they found somebody, and that’s what I’ll do. I’m not quick to Jump, and I’m not quick to quit.

"I fish some, and play a little golf, and I love to mow grass. And I like to nap. Joyce and I like to travel. We’ve been to the West Indies, Peru, Ecuador, Belize, Taiwan, Mexico, Canada, mostly mission trips. The church gave me a trip to Alaska last year as a retirement gift. I’ve been blessed. God has allowed me to see a lot of things, and do a lot of things," he admitted.

He said his father was a great example in life.

"I don’t have heroes per se, but if anyone had an effect on my life it was my dad," Robertson said. "Dad was a hard man. He grew up hard. I mentioned he had to quit school. He didn’t have the benefit of a good education, and when he and my mother married he moved to Florida, and he was the Yankee in the bunch. He wasn’t the most popular man in the family, but he was never idle. He was always doing something. He was always a teacher, and a trainer and an encourager, but if you didn’t listen to those things, he could be a pretty mean dude."

He also said being a Gator fan can leave one feeling outnumbered in Tennessee.

"In football, Steve Spurrier is my hero," he shared. "I’m a Gator fan. I have a brick on the Gator walk. It’s right in the middle. Spurrier, Tebow, all those guys walked right over my brick every week. I’ve got a Gator room at home, and my office is decorated in Gator stuff. My friends come over and they won’t even go in it. I’m kind of outnumbered, but as long as the Gators keep winning I don’t care. It’s not nice to be hated, but as long as Tennessee hates the Gators, that means we’re doing good."

He said he would like to be remembered as a dedicated pastor and father.

"I like to talk," he said. "I don’t know if it’s a talent, but I love to preach. Preaching the gospel, the truth of God’s word is my life. I love to visit people. It’s about people with me. Preaching the gospel is about reaching people, and I love to do it. I’ll do it until I can’t do it anymore. I hope I die swiftly and painlessly someday. But not any time soon.

"I’ve told Joyce that if she can do it with a clear conscience, when I die, if I die first, I want my name and the dates, and I would like it to say that I was faithful to my task. If people can say that about me, that I was faithful to my task, that’s all I want."

Robertson said love is the ultimate answer to all the world’s problems.

"Love your family, love people, and let the love of god affect how you treat others, that is my best advice," he concluded.