SIR & LADY DOBBINS

~SCOTT W. & VIRGINIA RYLAND DOBBINS – October 29, 1932~

In his lifetime, my father was a lot of things. Starting at age 8, when his own father died, he because the “man of the household” – not so much assigned to that position by his mother as but becoming it out of necessity. His widowed mother, having been left with little money and no insurance (and long before social security) took in boarders, his 12-year old sister helped her mother cook and do the household chores, and my dad brought the coal up from the basement each morning before school and then after school did odd jobs around the neighborhood. Later in his teens after they moved from a rural community in eastern Colorado to Colorado Springs, he sold morning and evening newspapers on the street corners. And although his mother tried to keep him from the pool hall, he snuck in every chance he got and earned a little money that way.

He dropped out of school in the 10th grade and got a job working as a dishwasher in Manitou Springs. He didn’t want his mother to have to work so hard, so it made him work longer and harder and pick up more odd jobs. He became a jack of all trades and eventually became a successful businessman here in California.

The circumstances of his childhood shaped his feelings about women, marriage, family and work. How his feelings played out was that he became and remained, almost to the end of his life, a modern day Sir Galahad – the Perfect Knight” – perfect in courage, gentleness, courtesy and chivalry. He died at 93, still charming everyone. To be honest with you, he was a bit “too much” at times, and he came across as a “character.” But those who saw him that way didn’t have a chance to see the whole picture.

He loved my mother as deeply as anyone ever loved a wife. On a few occasions he tried to get that love captured in words. He was limited by his shortened schooling time and tended to get tangled up in his own words. In his old age he spent a lot of time on his poetry – and while we saw what sometimes seemed to be very silly writings, to him they said exactly what he meant to say. I saw a few of them, because toward the end I was the only one who lived in the same town as he did.

He died in 2001. The other day my daughter brought over something of his I had stored in her garage and had forgotten about. It was a “Proclamation” he had written for my mother and had it hand lettered and framed as a gift for her at Christmas, 1972. In it he again got tangled up in his words and his continuity of thought was a tinch haywire, but his intent was plain: he loved his wife, still, and he wanted to honor her with his words, just as he had done with his life.