“That was a beautiful time,” he said. “We all went to school together, and we all went to see Ray. All of us are still friends today.”

Bixler talked about his acquaintance with Robinson, giving details about how he and his friends would visit him every couple of months in the Koppel area where he walked.

“Everybody respected him. He was a nice person.”

He said Robinson would update them on how many miles he had on his tennis shoes.

Robinson also would tell them how he had been shocked by a high tension wire, he said, and that he had received doctor’s care. Robinson’s eyelids had been welded shut as a result of his injuries, and he could see light and dark, but little more, Bixler recalled.

How he could see his way to walk “is a good question,” Bixler said, guessing Robinson felt his way on the road and gravel from Route 18 toward New Galilee.

Asked why he didn’t have his face repaired, Robinson would say that God made him that way for a reason, and he didn’t want to change it, Bixler said.

Although he doesn’t recall how Robinson died, Bixler remembers the untimely death of Conners, who had been working for the Fisher Clothing Co.

He became a successful salesman and went to work in Cleveland, Bixler recalled of Conners, and one day en route home from work, he collapsed and died. He was 26 years old.

Bixler said he was glad to learn about the Green Man publicity because “those were memories that were long gone. I’d forgotten all about them.”