Dorothy Mae (Pidd) Morgan - A Brief History
by Frank Morgan
Until the end of her 92 years, “Dottie” has been known by all in her world as a compassionate, loving person whose arms, heart and home were always open. As a mother of 3, she cared for numerous foster children as well as many long-term guests who needed a “home” for a while. When her late husband, Joe Morgan became a chaplain in WW II, and later, when they lived here in a Navy town, she left the front door unlocked and blankets and pillows behind the couch so that service men on leave could slip in and sleep on the couch or on a cot or on the floor (depending on how many of them showed up on a given night) when they had no where else to go.
Dorothy Mae Pidd was born in Los Angeles, California on September 24, 1915. Her mother had been Mayme Nelson, born and raised on a farm in Clear Lake, Wisconsin. We don’t know how long Dorothy lived in Los Angeles, but we know it was at least two years because that’s how old Dorothy was when, in her earliest memory, she recalled falling off of a pier into the ocean. “I remember looking down into the swirling water, feeling dizzy, then the water coming up at me,” she recounted to her children. “My Mother didn’t see me fall. I would have perished if it hadn’t been for some anonymous young man on the beach who saw me topple in and raced out to save me,” she said. Perhaps that was why she always claimed to have a fear of water and of high places.
It probably tells us something important about her to know that, though she could scarcely keep herself afloat and feared the water, she learned to water ski when in her early 40’s.
Dorothy was only nine when “Daddy Pidd” passed away. They had been living in Minneapolis. It was there that a great encampment of American Indians from various language groups took place one summer only two blocks from their home. She was able to wander about among them, stirring in her a fascination with American Indians that lasted her whole life.
Her sister, Helen and her brother, Donald had both come along, and now her widowed Mother and the kids ages 2 to 9 moved back to her grandfather’s farm in Clear Lake.
Once there, Dorothy learned about cows and chickens and geese and gardening, but not everything she needed to know about horses. She told her children years later that she made the mistake of walking behind a horse waving a stick in her hand and got kicked in the face. The hoof hit right under her nose, nearly severing her entire upper lip, and leaving a scar from cheek to cheek that provoked questions from her kids and grand kids, and the story, with its lessons about things you do and don’t do around horses.
Stories of her Clear Lake years included milking 8 cows each morning before school, at times ice skating two miles to school on the frozen water in the ditches next to the road, being faster at climbing trees than the boys, and loving animals – even horses.
By the time she was 13, Dorothy’s Mother had remarried a man named Swanson, and her baby sister, Darlene was born.
At the age of 17 she was enrolled as a senior in the high school academy at Olivet College (now Olivet Nazarene University), in Illinois. To help with her expenses, she got a job in the school cafeteria, where Joe Morgan, a college student, was to be her supervisor. He did NOT make a good first impression, she later reported. “In fact, I did not like him at all,” she is known to have said. Dottie has always been a charmer, but his charms apparently matched hers. They were engaged before the end of the school year and married in the summer of 1934.
She knew when she married Joe Morgan that he would be a Nazarene pastor and she a pastor’s wife. It was during the depths of the depression, which meant life as a pastor’s wife would be even tougher. There are interesting stories surrounding their first pastorate, starting a church in Malta, Ohio in 1935. While there, their first child, Frank, was born in 1936 just across the river in McConnelsville, Ohio.
From the Malta church they went to Syracuse, Ohio. Then, in 1938, they went to Dunbar, West Virginia, a town near Charleston, where they pastored for five years. While in Dunbar, Jody and Judi were born. It was also while in Dunbar that Dorothy helped her husband start a new church in the all-black community just 8 miles away, Institute, West Virginia. Up to that point, there was not a single church in that town. Later, Institute, West Virginia became known all over the denomination as the sight of a Nazarene sponsored college.
Once the U. S. entered the Second World War, Dottie volunteered as a nurse’s aid in the hospital in Charleston to free up nurses for the war effort. It was something she could do, and she did it.
In 1943, her husband surprised everyone when he concluded that God was directing him to enter the Army Air Corps as a chaplain. Dorothy and her children went to stay with relatives in Ohio and then on to Boston, while her husband was in chaplain’s training at Harvard. Then it was on to his first assignment at Kern Field, just outside Salt Lake City, Utah.
No sooner had they found a place to live near the base when Dorothy called on her childhood experience on the farm. She bought a Jersey cow, known to produce 4 or 5 gallons of milk per day. She repaired a chicken coup and bought 125 chickens, which were soon producing many dozens of eggs per day. She would see to it that, even with wartime scarcity, her family and the soldier boys, who streamed in and out of the house, would have plenty of fresh milk and eggs. She also augmented the family income by selling what was left over.
In that summer of 1943 she canned over 800 quarts of food from her “Victory Garden” and what she could buy locally. She would see to it that the rationing of food would not be a problem in her home.
After three years in Denver, her husband was discharged from the service and accepted the pastorate here at San Diego First Church of the Nazarene in 1946. They pastored here for 19 years, leaving to pastor in Santa Cruz in 1965.
In 1976, and semi-retired, they returned to San Diego for good. In 1988, Joe Morgan passed away. Three years later, Dottie married the Reverend John Van Ryn, a friend of the family for about forty years, who had recently lost his wife. Seventeen months later, John Van Ryn left Dottie a widow again. But that was not to last long. Her friend and former neighbor, Frank Bullet convinced her to become his wife and she came to live on the horse ranch on which she lived the rest of her life.
After Frank Bullet passed on, Dottie was sure she would not marry again. But that was before she met Sammy Angotti. When the Apache Retreat Riding Club set up their operation on her ranch, they declared they could not get along without Sammy living in a mobile home on the ranch. It was not very long before a late-in-life romance blossomed between the two, and Dottie decided that neither could she get along without Sammy. They were married four and a half years ago. Along with being her sweetheart, Sammy also became her guardian angel, loving and caring for Dottie in an amazing way.
It is true, Dottie lost three husbands when they passed on. But Sammy Angotti was the only husband to lose Dottie. She entered God’s presence last Wednesday morning, May 21st.
In addition to leaving behind her beloved husband, Sammy, Dottie is also survived by her brother, Don Pidd of San Juan Baptista, California, and her sister, Darlene Kennedy, of El Cajon, neither of whom could be here today. She also leaves behind three children, six grandchildren and twelve great grand children. Nearly all of them, along with their spouses, are here to celebrate her life. We didn’t try to count nieces and grand nieces, nephews and grand nephews. But some of them are here today as well. Welcome! --- to all who are here sharing her memory.