- Date Of Birth: November 4, 1932
- Date Of Death: January 15, 2020
- State: Florida
MERRITT ISLAND – Roger Warren Dobson, of Merritt Island, a retired business and civic leader in Brevard County, passed away peacefully on January 15, 2020. He was 87.
Roger was predeceased by his mother, Helen Osteen Chandler, his stepfather George Wilkerson (“Winks”) Chandler, and his biological father, Cecil Warren Dobson.
A loving husband of 57 years, Roger is survived by his wife, Marilyn, their daughters Kathryn Dobson (spouse, Deborah Shelton) of Silver Spring, MD, and Caroline Dobson Raleigh (husband, James Raleigh) of Merritt Island, FL; granddaughters Chandler Kelley and Abigail Raleigh; sister, Beverly (Dobson) Ford (husband, Dr. Albert Ford [deceased]) of Gainesville, FL; brother-in-law Greg Smith (wife, Ellen) of Eugene, OR; sister-in-law Julie Smith (husband, James Smith [deceased]) of Oswego, NY; niece and nephews Susan Ford Ori, Kelly Ford, and Simon Smith; and two half-sisters with whom he was recently united, Delores (Dee) Worley and Margee Commeau, both of Florida.
Roger grew up fishing and hunting on Cape Canaveral and on his grandparents’ homestead land on Merritt Island during the Great Depression. He attended the one-room Canaveral schoolhouse before he and his sister, Beverly, made the trek across the river to Cocoa Elementary. At Cocoa High School, he lettered in football and basketball.
Roger earned his bachelor’s degree at Stetson University as a member of ROTC, served as an artillery specialist in the U.S. Army, then applied his G.I. Bill funds toward a graduate degree in accounting and finance at the University of Colorado. In 1957, before heading west, Roger helped his mother and stepfather transform their land into the “Celestial Trailer Park,” for personnel relocating to NASA as part of America’s Space Race. It was the first of many ways his strategic planning would shape the landscape of central Brevard.
After completing his master’s degree, the freshly minted CPA joined accounting giant Price Waterhouse in New York City. During a stint in Rochester for the firm’s Eastman Kodak audit, he met the love of his life and wife of 57 years, Marilyn Smith, a teacher and accomplished pianist who at first refused to believe Roger had grown up in the recently renamed Cape Kennedy, an area she told him was home only to rockets.
Married in New York in 1962, the couple gradually made their way south, first with Price Waterhouse in Atlanta and Tampa, and later to Roger’s hometown, where he began a solo accounting firm. During that time, he helped his wife build a private school, Children’s World, which she ran until resigning to raise their daughters, Katy and Caroline. Slowly, Roger’s fledgling accounting firm developed into Dobson, Jones, Bjerning & Hoyman. It was the county’s largest accounting firm when partner Chas Hoyman assumed its helm as Hoyman Dobson.
An active leader in the Cocoa Beach Area Chamber of Commerce from the late 1960s, Roger was early on identified by Florida’s governors for key roles. Gov. Reubin Askew named him to the Cape Canaveral Hospital Board of Trustees, an appointment renewed by Gov. Bob Graham, who also named him trustee of Brevard Community College, a capacity in which Roger served from 1978 until 1986.
Dobson and Bjerning went on to partner with Bjornar Hermansen to build the Cocoa Beach Hampton Inn and Marriott Courtyard.
In his occasional free time, Roger enjoyed watching sports, hunting duck and turkey, taking in Indian River sunsets with his wife, and reading every single column inch of the newspaper.
