I was told he roared (I bet those of you who admired him can see that smile and hear him laughing now). He put a sticky on the ad saying, “We’ll order a dozen, of course!” with his trademark smily emoji on the bottom.

That was meant for me. But the staff didn’t know it was a joke.

A few weeks later the manager of the FOTF bookstore walked in to my office with a box containing 10 of the bobbleheads that had cost $500 each. I was horrified. I called the Alumni association. They got a great laugh out it and immediately agreed to send a check to reimburse FOTF and include payment for the postage and insurance.

Then, I went straight to Dr. Dobson to tell him. Gosh did he laugh. The LSU Alumni association not only sent back FOTF’s $5,000 check, but included a donation to FOTF on top of that — to which Jim sent a handwritten thank you and included a personal donation from he and his wife, Shirley, to LSU.

In recent years USC beat LSU a couple of times. He always called, just after the game, to joyously rub that in a bit.

What a man.

Oh, about his connection to USC, most people don’t know about Dr. Dobson’s academic background. His good friend Al Mohler wrote this in World magazine yesterday:

He went to the University of Southern California, and did both a master’s degree and a PhD in psychology. And he focused particularly on children.

Now, after that, he ended up on the staff of a children’s hospital, but he also became associate clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of Southern California’s Medical School.

And that was a role he fulfilled for many years, but there were huge things going on in the background that had Jim Dobson’s attention. And the background moved to the foreground.

So, one of the things that marked Jim Dobson, is that even as so much of the therapeutic world was moving in a markedly secular direction and in a very liberal direction, he was not. Jim Dobson eventually would leave the School of Medicine there, where he was a child psychologist and leave the staff of the hospital.

He had begun media work already. It was discovered he had real talent for communicating over the media. And he eventually established a media presence that became later Focus on the Family. And Focus on the Family was established in 1977 and was most closely identified in the beginnings with Pasadena, California. And by the way, before going through the graduate program, Jim Dobson married his wife Shirley. And they were very close indeed, nearly inseparable. And their marriage lasted almost 65 years. Pretty remarkable on its own.

As was he. I’m praying for goodbye grace for Shirley, Danae, Ryan, Laura, and the grands.