Bobby was the 11th and last surviving of the 12 children born to Fred and Catherine (Tully) Dobler. Around 1915 the family moved to Seattle from Bobby's birthplace of Port Townsend, Wash., where Fred, recently retired from the Army, had served as police chief.

After Bobby's name in the 1929 Lincoln High School annual is written "Outlook: Work as a secretary". This was a work she was well qualified for because of, among other skills, her speed and accuracy in typing and shorthand. The next year she was the private secretary for the regional manager of the Bemis Bag Manufacturing Company in Seattle. She worked there for the next ten years. In advanced age, being driven past the Bemis building, Bobby would happily reminisce about the good times there and the people she had worked with. Her skills stayed with her. In her late 90's she would write out her grocery lists in shorthand.

In May of 1942, during World War II, Bobby arrived in Sitka, Alaska, and began work as a stenographer for the Navy. There she met Jack DeLos Butler from Hutchinson, Kansas, a lieutenant in the Army's Coast Artillery Corps. Their daughter, Cathy, was born in Seattle in 1943 with spina bifida.

In the early years Cathy required constant care, which her mother lovingly provided, aided by Cathy's grandmother and aunt Flora in the family home in Seattle. Eventually Cathy could get around with the aid of crutches, but she was not allowed to attend school because of her condition and required homeschooling. Her first day as a student in a schoolhouse was the day she received her high school diploma. She went on to get a Master's Degree and retired after a 30-year teaching career.

When Cathy's needs required less of her time, Bobby put her secretarial skills to work again, this time at St. John's Church and school in Seattle. After retirement she and Cathy moved to Providence - Mt. St. Vincent senior care center, where they both passed away - Cathy in 2008 and Bobby in 2011, one month after her 100th birthday celebration.