Norfolk City Virginia USGenWeb Archives Obituaries.....Dobie, Richard Magruder May 22, 1952
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Robert Woolfitt http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00034.html#0008401 June 19, 2025, 3:56 pm

Virginian-Pilot May 29, 1952
Memorial services for Richard Magruder Dobie, 39, of Washington, an employee of 
the State Department who disappeared last Friday night from a Norfolk-Newport 
News ferry, will be conducted Friday at noon at the Church of the Good Shepherd, 
Meadowbrook.
The Rt. Rev. George P. Gunn, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Southern 
Virginia, and the Rev. Norman Slater, rector of Good Shepherd, will officiate.
Mr. Dobie, a former newspaperman and free-lance writer, disappeared from a ferry 
bound for Norfolk on Friday at approximately 10 p.m. while en route to Norfolk 
from Washington with his brother-in-law, Henry B. Robinson, of Long Island. N.Y. 
The body was recovered yesterday in Hampton Roads.	
			Walked Toward Stern
Dr. C. D. J. Macdonald, Norfolk coroner, viewed the body and said that death 
apparently was caused by drowning. It was undetermined how Mr. Dobie fell from 
the ferry, but it was known that he had been despondent lately. His brother-in-
law said he last saw him walking toward the stern of the ferry. The son of 
Richard L. Dobie, Norfolk insurance agent, and Mrs. Emily Gibson Dobie, who 
reside at North Shore Point, Magruder Dobie was born in Norfolk. He was educated 
at the Woodberry Forest School, University of Virginia and Columbia University, 
where he received a graduate degree in journalism.	
His newspaper experience, all prior to World War II, included service as a 
reporter with the Richmond News Leader, Baltimore Sun and Norfolk Virginian-
Pilot. He served also for awhile on the staff of Editor and Publisher, in New 
York.
	              Was Naval Officer
Early in the war he was commissioned an officer in Naval Intelligence and served 
extensively in the Pacific.
After the war, he served briefly in a New York advertising office. Then 
undertook a career in free-lance writing. His work appeared in such magazines as 
the Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, Life and This Week. Some months ago, he left 
this field to join the public relations staff of the State Department and last 
year made a trip around the world with the Voice of America. His home at the 
time of his death was in Washington, where he was stationed with the State 
Department.
Surviving, in addition to his parents, are a sister, Mrs. Henry B. Robinson, of 
Long Island, and two daughters, Julia Magruder Dobie and Elizabeth Gibson Dobie. 
He was a nephew of Judge Armistead Dobie, of Charlottesville, former dean of the 
University of Virginia Law School and now on the bench of the United States 
Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth District.

Additional Comments:
Based on the obituaries for him, his death occurred on Friday, May 23, 1952, 
although his death certificate and tombstone state it was the 22nd.

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/norfolkcity/obits/d/dobie15976nob.txt

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