songs, I'll Walk With God. Not that the writing of Soderberg and Sommer didn't have its critics, one being long time cast member, Charita Bauer. Under Soderberg and Sommer, to spice things up just a bit, the already airing romantic triangle between the two Bauer sons, Mike and Ed, and the character of Leslie Jackson Bauer Norris heated up, with Charita Bauer's character of Bert, who was the mother of both of the men, finding out about the romance (finally) in a most shocking way—during Leslie's trial, via a nosy television news reporter, for supposedly murdering Stanley Norris! This story line was criticized by Charita Bauer, whose role moved in time from Bauer matriarch to the beacon of support for the entire town. Bauer was quoted as saying, "Now [the show's producers] don't really care about the idea of the family anymore. That used to be the main theme of the show, but now it's gone." Feeling pressure from newer, more youth-oriented serials such as The Young and the Restless, All My Children, and Ryan's Hope, Procter & Gamble hired head writers Bridget and Jerome Dobson in 1975. The Dobsons first started writing in November 1975 taking over from Gentile, Cenedella and Lipton. The married duo focused on core characters, giving Bert her first real story line in years when her husband Bill came back from the dead. The Dobsons also gave a last name to a character introduced near the end of the last writing regime, in September 1975. Under The Dobsons this character became one of the sexiest and most complicated "vixens" (The Dobsons are credited with making her a complicated "vixen") in the show's history when nurse Rita Stapleton arrived in Springfield and later was joined, in the summer of 1976, by her sweet sister Eve and mother Viola. The Dobsons also created two families that were to become prominent in story lines all the way to the show's end in September 2009, the Spauldings and the Marlers. A matter of fact, Ross Marler (introduced by The Dobsons on March 23, 1979) would remain part of the show's canvas, until later writers killed him off, in 2006 (the actor who played Ross, Jerry verDorn would stay with the show until the fall of 2005 which made him the longest running {consecutively} cast member, at that time, of all time 26 years and which only became second for