My Story, My Song: Mother-Daughter Reflections on Life and Faith

Good Morning America viewers have come to know and love Lucimarian Roberts, the 87-year-old mother of co-anchor Robin Roberts. For many, the heartfelt connection began the day Hurricane Katrina blew through the Gulf Coast. They eagerly watched as Robin stood among the remnants of her hometown and talked about her desperate search for her elderly mother, who had ridden out the storm in her Mississippi home. Once she knew that her mother was safe, Robin admitted that she was not surprised to learn that even as the winds howled and floodwaters rose, Lucimarian Roberts sang hymns.

For all of her long life, Lucimarian Tolliver Roberts has drawn upon her faith in God for comfort and strength. Even today as she sits down at the piano, she can recite the lyrics to hundreds of hymns and spirituals first learned in her childhood church in Akron, Ohio. In fact, she credits hymns for helping her, a black woman born in 1924, live faithfully through the turbulent times of the Great Depression, segregation, and racial prejudice even as the wife of a U.S. Air Force officer. “Who would have thought that a poor black girl with an alcoholic father would one dayendup at Howard University on a scholarship and eventually Chair of the Board of the New Orleans branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta?” she asks with a smile.

My Story, My Song brings together the pivotal moments of Lucimarian Roberts’ intriguing life with personal reflections from her daughter Robin. “God has brought the most wonderful and sometimes the most unlikely people, of all ages and races, into my life to encourage and guide me on this spiritual journey of life,” Mrs. Roberts says with a brightness in her eyes. Clearly, she is still singing her song.