Wilbur Franklin Dobson

He will be laid to rest at Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery on Wednesday, May 18, 2022 at 2:15 PM, with U.S. Military Honors.

He was born Wilbur Franklin Dobson in Spencer, Medina County, Ohio on November 5th 1931, to parents Lewis William and Clara Wilhelmina (née Reutter) Dobson. After growing up on a small Ohio farm during the Great Depression and WWII, Wilbur attended Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, Ohio after making one of the highest aptitude test scores in the County. He worked as a mason in the summers to pay for all his college and following his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering degree with Honors, he got a job in aerospace at NACA (now NASA) in Cleveland.

In 1955, Wilbur joined the US Navy and was assigned to be a Nuclear Weapons Officer because of his entrance exam score. In 1957, he was on the aircraft carrier USS Lexington, touring the Far East for 6 months, where he met Noriko Moriyama who worked at a Navy Exchange store in Japan and who would later be his wife. After his military service, Wilbur married Noriko on April 6, 1958 in Valley City, Ohio and he went back to his job at NACA in Cleveland, Ohio. Wilbur and his wife Noriko had a daughter in 1959, followed by twin girls, one year later. In 1962, he was the lead author on several scholarly NASA publications including “Starting Conditions for Nonoscillatory Low-thrust Planet-escape Trajectories” and “Elements and Parameters of the Osculating Orbit and Their Derivatives.” In 1963, he moved to Dallas, Texas to work for LTV and wrote all the mission planning and flight software (in FORTRAN) necessary for NASA’s Scout rocket to launch satellites.

He later moved to Houston and worked at TRW, because they valued analytical ability while LTV had only valued leadership ability, which he did not have or desire, even turning down promotions. At TRW, he wrote technical reports for NASA (located across the street from TRW) which made complex engineering problems understandable and he was a ghost reviewer before his manager signed off reports written by PhDs for NASA delivery. About 2 months before the first moon landing, Neil Armstrong requested a backup for radar-measured altitude, because the moon has no atmosphere or barometric altitude to measure altitude conventionally as on Earth. NASA asked TRW for Wilbur’s help and he met with a man from NASA and Neil Armstrong and they decided that Armstrong would not have time to use Wilbur’s technical report while in descent, so the Apollo 11 crew likely used Wilbur’s report to calibrate their radar while in orbit. Two horizontal lines were put on the Moon Lander window, so that Armstrong could measure the time for the line of sight to a lunar landmark to rotate between them, using Wilbur’s chart calculations to read his altitude so that he could land safely on the Moon.

In the early 1970s, Wilbur made custom wood cabinets, hung doors and trimmed new homes for builders, making more money than he had made as an engineer. He also built several homes for himself, doing all but the tedious plumbing and electric wiring. He moved to Austin for the scenery and climate, but later back to Dallas to work at Lockheed with the same missile guidance group that was at LTV. Also in Dallas, he worked for Texas Instruments and Raytheon. As an engineer, he usually preferred contract work because of the much higher pay. Wilbur did stock trading as a lifelong hobby, right up until he passed. In 2020, he was honored as one of 3 people inducted into the Buckeye Local Schools’ Hall of Fame for that year, although he was unable to travel to accept his award in person at their ceremony.

As he relocated, Wilbur was a member of several Baptist churches and later taught the elder adults’ Sunday School class at his last church, always looking forward to the Rapture. He will be missed by his family and all those he helped out or did handyman work for. Wilbur was preceded by Noriko, his beloved wife of 62 years, his parents, his older brother Roger Dobson and his younger brother Donald Dobson; Wilbur is survived by his younger brother Gerald “Jerry” Dobson of Medina, Ohio; his oldest daughter, Aileen Speegle, and her husband Mike; daughter, Laura Gelber, and her husband David; daughter, Linda Dobson; granddaughters, Angeleen Speegle and her fiancé Viktor Torelli, Christeen Ashe and her husband Shaypher, Pauleen Speegle and her fiancé Harrison Chong, Maureen Speegle, Courtney Owens and her husband Austin, Chelsea Gelber; grandson, Joshua Gelber; granddaughters Rachel Wetsch and her husband Kyle, Rebecca Webster; and 3 great-grandchildren.