Sun Herald, The (Biloxi, MS) - February 18, 2004
GULFPORT --- The whole of Ruby M. Switzer Dobson's family will miss her mightily; the 70-year-old mother, grandmother and great-grandmother died Sunday. Most heartbroken, though, probably will be her eight great-grandchildren, to whom "Maw Maw" read regularly.

"Hannah is just 2," Dobson's daughter-in-law Cindy Dobson said Tuesday, "and Maw Maw read to her ever since she was newborn. Then when my mother-in-law couldn't read anymore, Hannah would take her Winnie the Pooh book and 'read' it to Maw Maw. She'd make up the story as she went along --- to go with the pictures."

The catch in Cindy Dobson's voice conveyed her feelings, but she went on, "I've been married to Steve (Ruby's son Steven Ray Dobson) for 30 1/2 years, and she and I never had a cross word," Cindy said. "She taught me so much."

One of Cindy Dobson's fond recollections was of porch sitting.

"We're big coffee drinkers," she said, "and after lunch --- my husband comes home for lunch every day --- we'd eat and then all sit out on the porch and drink coffee.

"She was a great woman, all right, and a loving one."

Ruby Dobson, who also was quite active in the Biloxi River Baptist Church, clearly got pleasure from doing things for others. She cared for a friend with cancer and did it in her own home. She cared for a daughter, Jackie McDaniel, who was born with a heart condition and then for Jackie's young son, who was 2 when she died.

She was someone on whom others could depend, her daughter-in-law said: "She was the same whenever you saw her, always the same. You'd have to have known her to understand what I'm saying. If it hadn't been for Ruby --- she was the greatest support for me when I lost my mother and then 10 months later lost my father. She was my mother-in-law, but she was like a mother to me."

The funeral will be at noon today at Biloxi River Baptist Church with burial at Coalville Cemetery in Harrison County