|
Dorothy Marie Fawcett, 96, Missoula, Mont.
Obituaries · November 19, 2015
Dorothy Marie Fawcett, 96, of Missoula, Mont., passed away Monday, Nov. 2, 2015, at St Patrick Hospital.
Born and raised in West Branch, Iowa, Dorothy was the daughter of Clarence and Bessie Secrest.
She graduated from Cornell College with a degree in teaching. She loved music and played the piano both solo and with friends at events in the small town of West Branch and on throughout her life. She also loved playing tennis and indulging her adventurous spirit, including learning to fly an airplane when she was 22.
In 1941, after a year of teaching elementary school music, she married her childhood sweetheart, Don Fawcett (son of Carlos and Mabel Fawcett of Springdale, Iowa) and joined him in Massachusetts while he finished his medical training.
Shortly after the birth of their first son, Bob Fawcett, Don left for Europe as a battalion surgeon in World War II. Fortunately, Don survived the war and went on to a long and distinguished career as one of the earliest electron-micro-scopists and a founding force in the field of cell biology.
Dorothy and Don had three more children after the war and Dorothy masterfully handled their domestic life together while also entertaining his colleagues and often housing his students. She was a wellspring of love and support for her children, grandchildren and all whom she touched. After her own children left home, she continued to open her home to numerous foreign students who came to Boston to study. They all loved her generous nature and good cooking.
Dorothy was dedicated to her community. She served as a Girl Scout leader and in various levels of the Massachusetts Federations of Women’s Clubs, a philanthropic organization. She and Don traveled the world extensively together and lived in Nairobi, Kenya, for five years following Don’s retirement from the chairmanship of Anatomy at Harvard Medical School. While he worked at the International Laboratory for Research in Animal Diseases, she worked as a docent at the Museum of Natural History in Nairobi, took up flower arranging, taught local Kenyan children to play piano and gave generously of her motherly support to many other scientists’ wives and children.
Upon returning to the United States, Dorothy and Don moved to Missoula in 1987, to be near their daughter Dona, who served on the faculty of the University of Montana.
Don and Dorothy joined the Montana Native Plant Society and she served as treasurer for many years. They also belonged to the Historical Society and enjoyed traveling around Montana and the western U.S. photographing landscapes, wildlife and wildflowers. They moved to The Springs in 2007 where he preceded her in death in 2009 at the age of 92.
Dorothy is survived by her four children: Bob Fawcett of Stratham, N.H., Mary Papish of Hawaii, Dona Boggs Aitken of Ovando, Mont., and Joe Fawcett of North Little Rock, Ark.; 13 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.
In lieu of flowers, a small donation to either the West Branch Heritage Foundation or Main Street West Branch in her memory would be welcome.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
