ENMU professor was good for us all

Over the five years I’ve been in journalism, I’ve conducted many interviews. Because I graduated from Eastern New Mexico University out of the communication department, you can imagine I spoke to Department Chair Patti Dobson often. And yes, interviewed her multiple times; whether it was for an assignment or even in my professional career if the news related back to ENMU.

Learning of Dobson’s passing on Friday really was a heavy weight for me to carry. And undoubtedly so, for all of Dobson’s other students.

In a voice memo I found on my phone from 2019 that I titled “Dr. Dobson Interview,” which was for some random assignment I had at the time, I asked her about her life growing up, what got her into communications, and of course, why in the world she loves giraffes so much. If you know, you know.

I remember her office was covered in images of giraffes. She said she doesn’t know how her love for the animal started, but that she’s always been drawn to them. Since she was a little girl, she loved giraffe prints. 

Growing up in Rhode Island, Dobson told me it was a magical place. She could still hear and smell the ocean that she used to wake up to every morning. 

She got to travel a lot since her dad was in the military. In her later life, she told me she and her husband loved to go to new places. She said they were also big animal lovers, of all kinds. They even had what she called a “retirement ranch” for animals that couldn’t be adopted due to medical reasons or previous abuse they had experienced.

She said her parents, especially her father, instilled in her that it’s not enough to be good at something, but that you have to be good for something. “I live by that,” she told me. And she was good for a lot of things and a lot of people.

If you needed something done as one of Dobson’s students, she made it her mission until it was completed. For me, she wasn’t my official advisor, but I sure thought of her as my advisor because of how often she helped me get into the classes I needed. 

I think we can all find comfort in where Dobson is now. In that 2019 interview I had with her, she told me about her faith and how sharing the Gospel is a big part of the many things she did. 

I like to think she is up there with the angels surrounded by all the giraffes she could even imagine. 

Landry Sena is a graduate of Eastern New Mexico University and a reporter with The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact her:

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