Dorothy J. Hamler

Dorothy J. Hamler, a gentle soul and green-thumbed gardening warrior, has returned to the soil. She was reclusive and difficult to get to know but was social, gregarious and full of laughter among her small circle of dear friends. Much of her long life was devoted to the horticultural arts and her entire lawn was run amok by flowering trees and shrubs, and annuals and perennials of all types. The plants and their care were her life and she could prattle on for hours about root stock, origins of varieties, parasites, fertilizer and her nemeses, the twin evil of rabbits and squirrels.

Dorothy was born November 11, 1916 in the tiny Kansas town of Summerfield where her father James Arthur Hamler, Sr., was a farmer and banker. Her mother Effie Beavers Hamler taught music lessons throughout her life, inculcating a deep love of music into the psyche of Dorothy and her younger brother Jamie. Jamie was a sickly and colicky child and Dorothy doted upon him. They both grew up playing music of all types. Jamie, before he died, was found on the blues and jazz scene throughout Kansas City, jamming on the piano and organ. Dorothy played the piano and organ all her life until her fingers – gnarled with age and arthritis – failed her.

Dorothy grew up in Marceline, MO, then Merriam alongside the Frisco (The St. Louis and San Francisco) and the Katy (Missouri-Kansas-Texas) railroad line, then Lenexa where her father continued farming and banking. As a child she remembered going to Merriam Park far out in the country and seeing the bears in the pits. She was graduated from Shawnee Mission High School in 1935 when there was still only the one original and when Merriam, Shawnee, Mission, Lenexa, Overland Park and all the rest were still individual towns separated by miles of farmland. She attended Huffs Business School on the Country Club Plaza, riding there with her father or gentlemen friends who generally were not gentlemanly and wanted to be more than friends. She recalled driving past the miles of fields and pastures from Overland Park to the Plaza. She obtained work as a secretary taking dictation, doing shorthand, typing and filing, but that career was interrupted by the arrival of World War II. She was riding in the typical car of the day – one without a radio, MP3 player or DVD system. When the family arrived at Fort Scott a real estate lady told them of the attack on Pearl Harbor. First they were in disbelief, then shocked and horrified and then terribly curious about what Pearl Harbor was and where it could be found.

Early in the war she worked for Handy Woodworking where they manufactured wooden cabinets for radio equipment to mount onboard ships. She pretty much polished wood for eight hours a day for several years. It wasn’t any fun but it was important because polished wood resisted moisture better than rough, unfinished wood. She adopted a lost puppy and a cat. The puppy cried all night. Soon both the dog and cat were found dead, apparently poisoned by angry neighbors. Later in the war she worked at the Medical Corps office in the Fairfax District as a secretary for the director, riding to work with various gentlemen who also worked in the manufacturing area. She fought off advances to and from work and considered it an occupational hazard. She was pleased to hear the cacophony of horns, whistles and church bells pealing on VE Day. She recalled the announcement of the A-bomb drops in Japan but really didn’t remember a second celebratory event on VJ Day. All conflict and violence was abhorrent to her and she never liked being around the chicken plucking and hog butchering on the farm.

Her brother returned home with a permanent mental disability from his non-battle tour of duty as a military clerk in England. His mental illness along with the loss of friends, and the puppy and kitten left Dorothy scarred. She never thought about it much after that as it was “all too horrible and she just couldn’t bear to dwell on it.”

When Truman became president she was pleased and proud that a “neighbor” to the east would attain such a role. It was even a greater delight and source of pride when fellow Kansan Eisenhower was elected president. He was also quite the heartthrob as she remembered – the whole men in uniform thing. He was a man’s man who liked girls and had a nice engaging grin. On one of her frequent travel adventures Dorothy went to Abilene and enjoyed seeing Eisenhower’s electric car and numerous beautiful portraits hanging in his museum. When the young men mustered in Union Station for a train ride to the Korean War she recalled watching them jauntily marching and bantering amongst themselves. She always suspected their boisterousness was simply hiding nerves from each other and the hope of a last fling with some willing lass in the railroad parking lot.

Dorothy attended Kansas City University and took Spanish, among other courses. She used her Spanish frequently as she and her friend Ethel Vassmer traveled all over Mexico and South America. Her trips included railroad, steamers and cargo ship routes to Venezuela, Guatemala, Panama, Mexico, and Cuba. She spoke of two single American girls (and sometimes just herself) navigating their way around these places, and encounters with snakes, jaguars, Raul Castro and other predators. Several times she missed disaster only narrowly pulling into sidings before an oncoming train zoomed by on the single track. You couldn’t reach out the windows lest a jungle tree looming in would smack you. She watched ships passing through the locks of the Panama Canal and helped harvest bananas with a constant eye out for tarantulas. Once, arriving in Cuba she was accosted by Castro who went through her passport and underwear with a leer on his face. She felt terribly threatened and would have left Cuba immediately but couldn’t afford to reticket. She said she was thrilled to get out of Cuba in one piece and even happier never to have met Raul’s “big brother.” She did enjoy the famous old Tropicana Hotel and night club shows and flirting with Americans she understood to be mobsters. Other trips included Hawaii on the Cunard lines, driving to Banff National Park in Canada, across America several times with memories of work being done at Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse, sights of Yellowstone, Colorado, California and the Pacific Ocean, Chicago and New York at the Roxie Theater and also at Radio City Music Hall to see the really gorgeous show put on by the Rockettes. In Paris she saw “Carmen” performed by “that famous Latin soprano oh, whatshername?” the Eiffel Tower, and bullfights in Spain which sickened her. “It was disgusting. It was so awful if I’d have known I never would have gone.” But Gina Lollobrigida arrived wearing a flowing white cape that simply cut a swath through the men and that sight brightened the otherwise bloody day. She also went to Nice, then Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium and Germany on trains and buses. Another trip included England, where she remembered hearing Big Ben toll and her Tower of London tour; Rome, Venice and Florence which were all so odiferous she had to hold her nose the entire time. She toured the Roman Forum and Coliseum but refused to ride with the Venice Gondoliers because the water was so sewage polluted she couldn’t bear the thought of falling in the “world’s biggest open cesspool.” The trip included the cathedral at Cologne that was mostly spared the bombing of the Second World War that flattened the rest of the city. They were ripping up the floor there to install in-floor electric heating. Everything else in Cologne was new. She saved and scrimped all year in order to afford these dramatic but low-budget trips.

Dorothy was an artist as well as gardener and musician. She enjoyed painting oil scenes based on original family photographs. She was frugal, to the end of her days still driving the 1970 Duster she bought new for $2,100.

She never married, partly due to the shortage of men resulting from the loss of life in World War II and Korea, but also due to her rejection of suitors for various reasons. One near marriage failed to come off when her fiancé announced they would move to Duluth for work opportunities. She never liked the cold and turned him down. He was memorable for the ability to open his throat and pour a pint of beer down in one gulp. She never thought that an admirable trait. Perhaps most of all she rejected proposals because she had become the caregiver to her failing mother and (after her mother died) the sole caregiver for her father. For many years it was father and daughter, with brother Jamie mentally ill. When her father passed away and her friends deceased or scattered across the USA and unable to travel further, Dorothy became more and more reclusive until she had only a handful of correspondents, and couple of good neighbors and her gardens. Still, she enjoyed coffee with her neighbors and spent endless days puttering among the roses, tulips, gladiolas, asters, magnolias, dogwoods, and every imaginable flowering thing.

In her later years she suffered breast cancer and survived. Her long-term planning provides care for the family of an old friend, and provides perpetual income for cancer research, prevention, treatment and care.

In the end she was “just too damn old,” and she died March 10, 2017, at age 100.

Cremation is planned. Memorial services will be 10 a.m. Friday, March 17, at McGilley & Hoge Johnson County Memorial Chapel, 8024 Santa Fe Drive, Overland Park. Memorial gifts may be made to Cancer Action, Inc. 10520 Barkley, Ste. 100, Overland Park, KS 66212. Online condolences may be left at www.mcgilleyhoge.com