Grace Dobson

Most people thought Grace Dobson would sell her rapidly growing hamburger business after her husband died in a private plane crash in 1967. Instead, during the next 38 years, the Whataburger matriarch, who died of complications from cancer Thursday in a local hospital at age 80, played an integral part in growing the hamburger chain into the eighth largest in the nation. She also gave copious amounts of her time and money back to Corpus Christi and the state. Dobson, an Arkansas native, married Harmon Dobson in 1955, five years after he opened the first Whataburger near Del Mar College. As a team, they expanded the Whataburger chain and had a family. After her husband died, Grace Dobson surrounded herself with a management team, became chairwoman of the board and grew the business to more than 600 company-owned and franchised stores - and raised three children as a single parent. Through the years, she also served in numerous philanthropic capacities including working for the USO, Coastal Bend Youth City, the Kidney Foundation and the Texas State Aquarium. Along the way she made lifelong friends, including Bill Sheka Sr., 83, who knew her for 50 years. Dobson lived in the same modest house at Santa Fe Street and Meldo Park Drive for years, maintaining a close relationship with her children, grandchildren and friends, Sheka said. She did not like to drive, so for years he picked her up and drove her to monthly USO meetings. Along the way they talked about old times and old friends. They are memories Sheka said he will treasure. "It was a friendship that grew and grew," Sheka said. "I considered myself lucky to be a friend of Grace. You can count real friends on one hand. Corpus Christi is going to miss Grace Dobson. I'm going to miss her, too." Fifty years after standing in line at the first Whataburger where he made friends with Grace Dobson, local businessmen Robert Adler was on hand earlier this year when his friend "Lady Grace" threw out the first pitch at the opening of Whataburger Field. For Adler, the name on the stadium and the ball-throwing honor were small tributes to a woman he thought the world of. "She was a very shy woman, who didn't want the limelight," Adler said Friday. "But through all of their giving and the charitable things that they did for the community and the state of Texas it glowed down on her anyway. She threw out the ball at the field right before she got really sick. She was very excited about that." She is survived by two sons, Thomas and Hugh Dobson; a daughter, Lynne Dobson; three sisters, Lola Stettler, Louise Abbot and Jean Florie; and five grandchildren. Funeral services are at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday at St. Luke's United Methodist Church, 3151 Reid Drive. Private burial will be in Seaside Memorial Park.