family

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.