Dobyns became chair of the Illinois Republican Women's executive committee in July 1919.[2] She was in charge of the women's division of the 1920 presidential campaign of Frank Orren Lowden.[3][4] She attended the celebration and convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Chicago that year.[5] In 1927 she wrote "The Lady and the Tiger (or, the Woman Voter and the Political Machine)",[6] in which she described the place of new women voters in party politics.[7] "With some possible exceptions, the aim of the political organizations is not good government, patriotic service, public welfare," she explained,[2] concluding that "the political machine is the greatest menace to democracy that exists today."[8]
Dobyns worked as a landscape designer in Pasadena,[9] and lectured on gardens.[10][11] She was the author of California Gardens (1931),[12][13] which is considered a valuable photographic source in California architectural history.[14][15] "The text by Mrs. Dobyns sketches the rise and growing interest in gardening and shows the historical background underlying California garden art," noted a reviewer in 1932.[16]
In 1909, Winifred Starr married lawyer and writer Fletcher Dobyns.[1][17] After 1932, they lived in an estate in Pasadena overlooking the Rose Bowl.[18] Her husband died in 1942,[19] and she died in 1963, at a retirement home in Duarte, California, aged 77 years.[20]