Dorothy "Dottie" Jewelette Donegan Smith

Age 90, passed away in Everett, WA on June 12, 2013. She was born to Phillip and Mary (Ralston) Donegan in Cedar Rapids, IA. She attended McKinley High School prior to serving as a 3rd Class Petty Officer in the Navy. During a Military Deployment stationed in San Diego, CA, she met her best friend, love of her life, and husband of 55 years, Dr. Clifton H. Smith. The two wed on January 10, 1946 in San Diego. She was a member and volunteer at Friends of Israel, Seattle Children’s Hospital, and North Seattle Alliance Church.

Dorothy is preceded in death by her parents; step-father, Sylvester Ralston; and her husband, Clifton. She leaves behind her 4 children, Patricia Kirk, Clifton M. Smith, LeDon Smith, and Daryl Smith; 4 grandchildren, Sean Smith, Britta Schillhammer, Clifton A.M. Smith, and Kim Chappell; 3 great-grandchildren, Reid Smith, Kjell Warness, and Halie Leise; sister-in-law, Avonne Stiles; many loving extended family and friends.

Visitation services will be held at 1PM on Wednesday, June 19, 2013 at Acacia Funeral Home & Memorial Park, Seattle, Washington. Funeral Service will be held at 2PM with a Committal Service following.

Memorial Donations may be made to:

Friends of Israel Gospel Mission

P.O. Box 908,

Bellmawr, NJ 08099.

We hold you close within our hearts, and there you shall remain, to walk with us throughout our lives, until we meet again.

~ Published in the Seattle Times, Everett Herald, & Cedar Rapids Gazette ~

~ Dottie's Life, a family tribute ~

EARLY YEARS:

Born in Cedar Rapids, IA on January 4th 1923, Dottie was the third and last child of Mary Turley and Philip Donegan. Her brother Don had been hoping for a boy and her sister Iny was glad to have an ally. “Dort” as the family called her, was an impish little wide-eyed creature who made everyone smile. When she was 3, Mary and Philip divorced and, a couple of years later, Sylvester Ralston “Buck” became her new daddy. Those two were inseparable. An incorrigible tinkerer, Buck always had a helper by his side whether he was fixing the porch, repairing someone’s car, or cracking walnuts for their backyard squirrel “Nutty”.

When times were tough, the kids went to live with their Grandma and uncles Homer and Harry on the family farm. They loved having her underfoot, indulged her every whim and dolled her up like a little princess. She became fast friends with all the animals on the place except for the gander who had an expressed distaste for human beings. A few years later when Buck landed a machine maintenance job at Quaker Oats, Dottie returned home again, sad to leave but happy to be reunited with Buck and Mary.

As she who grew into a fun-loving pun-making teen, she was no stranger to any house in her close-knit neighborhood. She became the go-to girl whenever anyone needed help with cleaning or shopping or babysitting. Her family home was often filled with amateur music makers but since Mary wasn’t much of a cook, Dottie became the food hostess. Her love of cooking opened opportunities for independence: first working in the kitchen of a nearby Bed & Breakfast, then in the Sandwich Shoppe that was the local hangout. She also did all the family cooking – her specialty was a good-old-Midwestern pork chop dinner with all the trimmings. She knew everyone, enjoyed a vibrant social life and attended Baptist services with her best friend every Sunday. She was fiercely loyal to those she loved, family or otherwise, and could be depended upon to help put up a united front in any dispute.

She spent the summer before her senior year in Chicago helping her aunt through an illness. Mary fretted about her in the big city and yanked her back to Cedar Rapids as soon as she could. Dottie came back “clothes crazy”. After graduation in 1941, she began working at Armstrong’s department store and soon was helping with window dressing, printing sales posters, and doing other marketing tasks. Her supervisor “Fitz” was impressed with her artistic skills and encouraged her to pursue an art career. Her life seemed to be settling into place when she became engaged to a local boy.

But World War II changed everything.

OUT OF THE NEST:

Like so many young people, Dottie felt it was her duty to be personally involved in the war effort. She joined the WAVES and did her induction training at Hunter College. The friends she made there came from all over the United States, introducing her to a wide variety of accents and attitudes. Off-duty hours were often spent in NYC – quite a change from Cedar Rapids. She took every opportunity she could to explore the museums and enjoy the restaurants. She was just a little slip of a thing in those days and the restaurants owners were always giving the girls complimentary meals when in uniform.

When her training was completed, Dottie was stationed at the Naval Base in San Diego. She was assigned as the dental assistant of the unit Commander and volunteered her off-duty hours at the base hospital. After about a year, her Commander played matchmaker by re-assigning her to a young Lieutenant, a recent arrival. His name was Clifton Howard Smith and, although it was love at first sight on his part, she played hard to get. After all, she was engaged to a great guy in Iowa. The evening of her separation from duty, Cliff won her over by proposing on the lawn of a large house which had a beautiful Christmas tree framed in its living room window. She said “yes”.

The next day she travelled back to Iowa, broke off her engagement, told her family she was moving West and bought a wedding dress. Upon her return to San Diego, they were married on January 18th 1946 in an intimate ceremony at the Wee Kirk ‘O the Heather in Glendale CA.

Since Cliff was still in active service, Dottie began classes at San Diego State. Life had other plans, however, when their first child Patricia was born on October 22nd, a tiny new resident in their already too-tiny apartment. College stopped and her motherhood career began.

FAMILY LIFE:

Not a moment too soon, Cliff’s term of enlistment ended thereafter and the little family moved to Seattle. While he was establishing his practice, Dottie began nesting in earnest in their new 2 bedroom 1 bath home. A couple years later son Clifton Michael came along on May 27th, then about two years later son LeDon appeared on July 24th then in another two years so son Daryl arrived on October 2nd. As the family grew, so did the house, eventually becoming a 5 bedroom 3 bath home due to Cliff’s DIY skills and Dottie’s enthusiasm for renovation projects. Various dogs and cats also called it home, as well other kinds of critters the boys brought home. Dottie loved them but the kids took care of them. The oversized back yard became the neighbor boys’ playground, always filled with noise and rambunctiousness. Cliff built an outdoor fireplace, patios and swimming pool to keep the kids occupied.

In between building projects, school-year Saturdays were spent gardening. Dottie was pulling weeds and Cliff was mowing grass. The dogs were busy digging up freshly planted bulbs when they weren’t chasing kids.

Sundays were spent house-hunting after Church. Dottie was always dressed to the nines in one of her little Dior suits. The “right house” wasn’t found until Pat had gone off to college, but these weekly expeditions had more to do with garnering renovation ideas then with actually finding a new home.

Summers were spent on Cliff’s parents 700 acre ranch in Vale OR. Dottie fed the hay crews and helped with the milking, irrigating, feeding calves, chickens, turkeys, pigs and cattle, canning & preserving, making supply runs, etc.

The family years weren’t all diapers and chores. Dottie’s great friend Myrtle dropped in for coffee most days to chat and there were the lunches with friends. Cliff and Dottie had season tickets to Travelogue, Seattle Symphony, the Rep and so forth. The couple enjoyed occasional getaways to Lake Louise and treated the whole family to a road trip to cheer for the Huskies at the 1964 Rose Bowl.

Although the family kept Dottie from working chair-side in Cliff’s dental practice, she did all the bookkeeping and billing for him. When the kids were older, she and Cliff began acquiring apartment buildings. She was very hands-on with painting and tiling projects as well as managing repairs and tenants. She carried a hammer and screwdriver in her handbag and was always fixing the plumbing in restaurants and offices. As an off-shoot of those investments, Dottie enrolled at the Cornish College of the Arts to study interior design. In addition, her long-cherished interest in the visual Arts led to wide-ranging coursework which included art history, life studies, photography and color theory, etc.

There were times when it was difficult for Dottie to be so far from Cedar Rapids. But she visited from time to time, attended all the family milestone events, and enjoyed entertaining her family on their visits to Seattle. Everybody made a special point to visit during the Seattle World’s Fair and they still talk about the Space Needle, the Monorail, and the Swedish waffles in the course of family conversation.

CHURCH LIFE:

When Dottie and Cliff settled in Seattle, University Presbyterian became their first church home. Cliff had been a member there during his Seattle Pacific College days and had sung in a men’s quartet. All of his friends in that group had become missionaries and were regular guests at Dottie’s home whenever they and their wives and kids were state-side on leave. On one occasion, a friend brought along his entire Korean Womens Choir. The house was overflowing for a couple of weeks.

As the kids reached school age, Dottie and Cliff changed their membership to Laurelhurst Presbyterian. She cooked for every pot-luck dinner, hosted Singspirations for 60 or so kids monthly in the house and fed them well, and also cooked and hosted large meals for church fundraisers and progressive dinners.

When the kids got older and eventually left the nest, Dottie and Cliff made their spiritual home in various churches until they found a loving fit at North Seattle Alliance Church.

In all of their church homes, Dottie was very actively involved in teaching Sunday School, even serving as the Sunday School coordinator in many of them. Her specialty was drawing Snoopy cartoon boards which conveyed the spiritual teaching for the Sunday lesson. They were always humorous but very creatively on message.

She also was known for her fantastic pot-luck contributions – healthy sandwiches in her later years; potato salad, deep-dish apple and cherry pie, Roquefort salad dressing, and incredible fancy decorated cakes and cookies in her pre-retirement years.

RETIREMENT:

When most of the kids were out of the nest, Dottie and Cliff moved to a house with a larger kitchen but a lesser view. They went into renovation mode and, between the two of them, found space for a darkroom and studio for Dottie’s art projects. The two-car garage became the storage area for all her left-over tile and paint materials, her rock and pine cone collections, and furniture refinishing projects.

When they turned the buildings over to a management company, Dottie and Cliff began their world travels: England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Turkey, Israel, Greece, China, Brazil, Argentina, Hawaii, Alaska, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, etc. Dottie was known for her 360o panorama shots. She also took pictures of anything that had whiskers, a beak, or hooves – no creature too great or small. Elephants were her particular favorites and baby sea otters came in a very close second.

When they downsized to the condo Dottie picked out next to the Shilshole Marina, Cliff bought a second unit to use as his man cave. Dottie quickly took it over with all her baking supplies and art projects. Her voluminous stamp and coin collections managed to find their way into that space as well.

WIDOWHOOD:

When Cliff passed in 2001, Dottie found the Sunset West Condominium community very supportive. She remained active in her church activities, attended children’s hospital guild meetings, continued to make her weekly salon visits, took pies to friends, and so forth as long as she was able but by 2008 her medical conditions required moving into a residential-care facility. Her daughter-in-law Laurie was her companion every weekday and her son Cliff joined her for church services most Sundays. Her kids and friends visited as much as they were able and joined her for holiday celebrations.

When she first arrived, she was very talkative and had lots of stories to share with other residents. As the years went by and her capacity for speech diminished, the place seemed oddly quiet. Her caregivers were kind and respectful of her dignity and she developed affectionate bonds with them, as did they with her and the family. She spent her last day enveloped in the voices of her visiting children and the Sound of Music, her favorite show because of the song Climb Every Mountain. She passed in her sleep the following morning, joining our Lord at last.