Bessie Lee Foster

Bessie Lee (Robinson) Foster, 73, of Lakeland, passed away May 12, 2021. She had been fighting a long hard battle against inflammatory breast cancer for the past 10 years. Yesterday she gave up the fight and went to be with her maker. She was preceded in death by her husband, David Foster. Born May 4, 1948, in Lenox, GA, she was a daughter of the late Snyder and Julia Robinson. She was also preceded in death by her siblings, James, Alice, Sallie, and Lola; and a niece, JoAnn Napoli. Bessie had resided in her beautiful home on Lake Gibson in Lakeland, FL since the early part of 1991. She had a long successful career with Publix starting on April 7, 1979. She worked her way up from a cashier to Assistant Manager and then in early 1991, she was promoted to a buyer at Corporate Headquarters in Lakeland. She was a very successful employee and the first female buyer for Publix and opened the door for other females to follow. This is why her daddy nicknamed her Spunky as a baby. During her tenure at Publix, she worked as a buyer for several different departments. These departments included housewares, health and beauty, dairy, and eggs. Bessie retired after almost 26 plus years of service from Publix Super Markets on January 24, 2007. Bessie retired at age 59 and allowed her to continue her love for traveling to many of the states and some foreign countries. Also, she and Dave were diligent about attending the Robinson Family Reunions in both GA and FL. She for many years brought lots of toys for the kids attending the reunion. She is survived by her son, Joseph (Cindy) Amiel Jr.; daughter, Cathy (Gary) Jones; brother, John (Jo) Robinson; sister, Shirley Weathers; 5 grandchildren, Deanna (Chris) Jones Carter, William Jones, Megan (Seth) Pardue, Wendy Jones, and Julia Amiel. A graveside service will be conducted at 10am on Saturday, July 3, 2021 at Mt. Enon Cemetery in Plant City. Please plan on attending a celebration of life at her home following the service. Memorial contributions may be made in lieu of flowers to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Awareness foundation, www.komen.org, or to the National Breast Cancer foundation, nationalbreastcancer.org For those unable to attend, the service will be livestreamed at https://fb.me/e/1w8o2HKD2