Our mother and long-time Pacific Northwest resident Dotty Brice passed away yesterday evening at about 7:40, after a short but intense struggle with lung and liver cancer. She was 88.
Born in Western Kansas early in the last century, Mom grew up poor, in a rural hamlet with the unlikely name of Radium. None of its residents had running water or electricity in their homes, and she always told us that as a child she believed the houses couldn't be electrified because the light bulbs would break if a truck carrying them attempted to pass over the railroad tracks on the outskirts of town.
She was nine when the Great Depression began, left home for the big city (Kansas City) to seek clerical work at 18, and was 21 when World War II began. She met and married our father, Don Brice, a U.S. Army sergeant at the time, in 1943. I was born in 1944 and the twins, Christine and Susan, in 1949.
Don and Dotty lived for ten years in Youngstown, Ohio where he worked as a broadcaster and she was a homemaker. In 1957 the family moved to the west coast, settling in Seattle. Don died in 1983.
Mom moved to the Olympic Peninsula in 1992, and was the longest-residing homeowner in her area at the time of her death. She was well known for her talent as a dancer, and for teaching a weekly country line dancing class at the Port Ludlow Bay Club, until March of this year.
Besides her children, she is survived by seven grandchildren, one great-grandchild, and by her sister, Florence Scott, 96, of Lawrence, Kansas.
David Brice
Christine Warmedahl
Sue Burke
2 comments:
I think she was a very good mom.
I am so sorry to hear of your mother's passing, catboxx. A very beautiful tribute, letting everyone get to know her just a bit.
I wish I could have done the same for my own, my mom died December 8, 1967. Seems close enough.
Take care of yourself.
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