Dorothy Cassens

July 7, 1922 - June 22, 2011

Dottie Golightly was born in July 1922 in the town of Metropolis, hard on the Mississippi River near the southern tip of Illinois. She was born in a large three-floor house, some said the biggest house in town, which had been hand-crafted by her father, Manuel, a master carpenter. Manuel, born during the Civil War, was over sixty when Dottie was born to his second wife, Rosa. Dottie had two sisters, the much older Freda and Elaine, with whom she was very close.

When Dottie was eighteen she was sent to New Orleans to attend the Charity Hospital School of Nursing. In the big city she met Frank Paul Cassens, a native of New Orleans and a student at Tulane University. He wooed her at Mardi Gras, where they dressed as George and Martha Washington. They were married in June of 1942. At first they lived apart because Frank was working for the Army but after the war they moved to Columbus, Ohio, where Frank was a graduate student at Ohio State. Dottie’s son, Cordell Paul, was born in Columbus in 1946.

Frank got a job with Standard Oil and moved his family to Aruba, NWI, where he worked as an industrial psychologist at the refinery. Dottie’s daughter, Denise Marie, was born in 1951 in Aruba. In the mid-fifties the family moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana where Frank worked in industrial relations at the oil refinery and Dottie made a home for her husband and two children. In 1969 the family returned to New Orleans where Frank had a teaching position at Tulane. Dottie made a beautiful home for them on the southern shore of Lake Pontchartrain.

In the mid-eighties Frank retired and the couple moved to Tallahassee, Florida. Dottie made a home for her husband and looked forward to visits with her grandchildren, Cordell’s two daughters and one son, and Denise’s son. Frank died in 1998 and Dottie continued living in Tallahassee until 2006 when she moved to Springfield, Virginia to be closer to her daughter and grandchildren.

Arrangements under the direction of National Funeral Home, Falls Church, VA.