ForeverMissed
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Her Life

Grandmie Years

June 1, 2012

These may have been the hardest of her life other than she got to do what she loved best and that was to travel.  You see her daughter married an Air Force NCO so it was a many of trips to visit.

Her first grandchild, Christopher David Nybro was born 3 weeks early on January 28, 1978 at a no longer active base of Blytheville AFB, Mississippi County, Arkansas.  Her first plane right from Chicago to Memphis, the Jonesboro.  She was thrilled.   On March 6, 1979 and 3 weeks late Lynda Heather Nybro appeared and one month later her and Robert drove down to spend a week with their grandchildren.

Then in 1981 it was trips to the Black Hills and the Badlands of South Dakota as Denns was stationed at Ellsworth AFB.  They loved making trips out there, Robert could watch the "dogs" run and Dorothea had unlimited areas to shop, dine out, and it was beautiful country and as she said as friendly as her hometown area of Carrier Mills.

But at 43 years of marriage, Robert died on April 2, 1998 at the exact age as his father, she told people.  But it wasn't until her brother died in January of 1999 that she began to close herself off from people.  She resented her niece just dropping in, she sister-in-law just coming over and taking charge.  She began to hate life, and didn't go out enjoy it has she had before.  She use to enjoy just picking her daughter and granddaughter up and just spending the day when they were not working.  She would have her grandson over to help her with yard work, or just to drive her around from place to place.

She would come out to the Nybro's home for a family get together.  And then in 2006 she was pushed down hitting her head which brought on her alzheimer's very early stages.  In late 2007 she was not allowed to see her daughter due to some family feud that was started long before.

But on May 13, 2012 she went to heaven to be with her brother to live in peace at last. 

Michigander only by Location

June 1, 2012

Dorothea after 6 months of school in Chicago was forced to come home along with Wilma as their brother was in a car accident.  They thought him dead for several hours until they were shown the body and it was not him but his cousin who had been driving the car.  Shortly after records were corrected and their brother was on his way to Chicago for major surgery.  But the girls stayed home to care for him.

Where does this lead to Michigan, you see the mines begans to lay off, strikes out numbered work and Lawrence was forced to take his electrical certification and head to where there were jobs, and that was Benton Harbor, Michigan; 1st with Sears, Roebuck and Co. installing electrical appliances.  And then on to 22 1/2 years of working for Nineteen Hundred Company (later to be known as Whirlpool Corporation) on the washer line, and then has a electician.  But in those first years it was hard on the family with the medical bills to still pay so Dorothea when to work for Sears, Roebuck & Co in Chicago as a cashier and bookkeeper. 

After a few years with them she applied for a job with the Benton Harbor office Indiana & Michigan Power Co.  here she worked until her daughter was 8 years old and where she had started 2 years before she married Robert Leroy Tunis on March 4, 1955.  For another 17 years after leaving I&M she was asked to come back and train cashiers.

She had a few jobs after she worked for Salvation Army on Water Street as office manager, then Berrien County Intermediate Schools as Assisstant in the Media Department, and finally as Executive Assisstand to the Assisstant Director of Berrien General Hospital.  She retired from the hosptial before it was closed down, due to a heart problem.

She watched her brother graduate from Benton Harbor Hight School.  She helped raise her niece Elizabeth Ann Benefield and nephew William Harvey Benefiled.  She had the adoptation papers for another niece but her parents decided to keep her.  And then on February 14, 1957 at Saint Joseph Memorial Hospital she gave birth to a baby girl, Rosetta Fern who had burgundy auburn hair.

She watched her daughter marry in 1977.  But she soul was still tied to Illinois and that coal mining community she grew up in, even with some much of her life in Michigan

Coal Miner's Daughter

June 1, 2012

Dorothea Alice was born to Lawrence Davis and Emma Elizabeth (Williams) Davis, the 2nd of their 3 children in 1929 in Carrier Mills, Saline County, Illinois.  Lawrence was a coal miner and electician for a local coal mining company.  But coal mining was the business in the area one can tell by her uncles which worked the coal mines as will.  She would say that racism was not a part of their lives growing up because like the men use to say once you came up after the end of shift you were the same color; and if you were a family who worked and sometimes died side by side.

This was what Dorothea brought to her life and work.  So this coal miner's daughter grew up in a hard life and a simple life with family just a farm away.  She learned farming from her mother who ran the family farm like most women of the time while the husbands worked outside the homestead.  Dorothea learned how to watch the weather, the plants, animals, and even the bugs for when to plant and if to harvest early or later.

She grew up with animals in her life but her greatest loves where her dogs; Queenie and Blue stand out most in my memory.

She talked of her father's mother who made their clothes just by spreading newspapers on the floor, having one lay on them and her treasing around them.  And that Granny as she called her could make the latest fashions with that pattern and a picture.  Dorothea also learned quilting in a way I had never hear of and that was a doorway frame; Granny would have half the entry to her dining room filled with the frame where she would be making a quilt.

She was very close to her younger brother, James, and talked of the them going out hunting together, and yes she knew her guns.  Later in my childhood I would remember my mother walking into one of the most famous gun shops in Fairplain, Benton Harbor, Michigan and picking out a new hunting rifle or shotgun for a gift.  The owner Mr. Peidt never thought anything of her looking the gun over over even letting her test it, she never missed.

After graduating Carrier Mills Community High School she entered Chicago School of Nursing with her older sister, Wilma Fern.