She was the oldest of four children and lived all her childhood years in the close-knit farming community of Lockett in north Texas. After graduating from high school, she left home to attend and graduate from St. John’s College in Winfield, Kansas.
Dorothy moved at the age of 19 to St. Louis and worked for the Emergency Planning Council of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod preparing and shipping food packages to World War II refugees in Europe. She later moved to Dallas, where she worked for Lone Star Gas Company.
It was in Dallas that Dorothy met her future husband, Paul Sy, at a church Walther League function. They were married April 15, 1951. Their early married life was spent in Austin. Paul’s career with Otis Elevator Company then took them to Dallas, where their three children were born. They moved to Houston in 1966 and then on to Fort Smith in 1973.
Dorothy had a life-long love of books and enjoyed gardening, playing the piano, sewing and all kinds of handwork including knitting and crocheting. She was always involved – whether in her children’s activities as room mother and Cub Scout den mother, or in her church as Altar Guild member and president of the zone Lutheran Women’s Missionary League and visiting shut-ins and nursing home residents, or even in her recent years as president of Methodist Nursing Home’s Resident Council.
Dorothy loved the Lord, and she loved His people – her natural family, her church family at Bethel Lutheran Church and Our Redeemer Lutheran Church who have been so faithful in holding her in their thoughts and prayers, and her Methodist Nursing Home family who took such good care of her and meant so much to her these past ten years. She was always able to remember the names of each one’s spouse or special friend and their children and was genuinely interested in them, always asking after each one at every opportunity.
She was preceded in death by her beloved husband Paul; her two sisters, Lillian and Ruth; and her brother, Edward.
Dorothy is survived by her three children, Mark Sy (Debra) of Kingwood, TX, Paula Sands (Bill) of Phoenix, AZ and Drew Sy (Nancy) of Plainfield, VT; four grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
Funeral Service will be 12:30 PM, Monday, December 16, 2019 at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, 2100 Cavanaugh Road, Fort Smith, with burial to follow at the U.S. National Cemetery in Fort Smith. Visitation will be 2:00 PM until 4:00 PM, Sunday, December 15, 2019 at Edwards Funeral Home, 201 North 12th Street, Fort Smith.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Habitat for Humanity or Methodist Health and Rehab, both of Fort Smith.
Services are entrusted to Edwards Funeral Home.
