Rosa Lee Gray

Ms. Gray was born September 1, 1921 in Shaw, Mississippi. Her Parents, Emmanuel and Irene Dorsey, moved to Colorado Springs with Rosa, her sister, Arletha, and brother, Emmanuel Dorsey. She attended Garfield, North Junior and Colorado Springs High School.

Not afraid of hard work, Ms. Gray worked on Fort Carson while maintaining a part-time job at the Colorado Springs Post Office, which she retired from in 1975. She left Fort Carson in 1965 to attend the Academy of Hair Design and graduated in 1966. Always thinking ahead, she had her own Beauty shop, “Chez Suzettes,” by the time she graduated. She was, at that time, one of the first black women in Colorado Springs to own her own business.

Retired from the Post Office and operating her own business, she was just beginning. She completed a course at the Community College in 1984, learning upholstery, and began reupholstering furniture as a hobby. It was around this time that she decided it was time to learn to swim, after many many years of fishing and camping out on the open lakes in boats with her parents. She signed up for swimming lessons and learned to swim.

In 1989, she and her sister, Arletha Bragg, attended a porcelain Doll Making Class. She went on to receive a certified Doll Product Teaching Diploma in 1992 and begin teaching doll making until 1998. Her and her sister had a really good business going making dolls and it gave them both a great deal of pleasure. As with many things, it was one more thing that they could do and enjoy together. Ms. Gray remembered the years making dolls with her sister as some of the best times in her life.

Ms. Gray did all of this and still made time for her family, church family, friends, camping, and fishing. She loved an occasional run up to Cripple Creek and was quite lucky most of the time.

Ms. Rosa Lee Gray went by many names, Mother, Grandmother, Great Grandmother, Great-great grandmother, Sister, Friend, Daughter, and most of all, Child of God.

She will be greatly missed by her family, church family, and friends.