We lost a great American on the Fourth of July. ElRene Dorn, who gave me several gifts including gab, a solid education, a stable home and an outlook on life that was optimistic to a fault, died while shopping for groceries Monday morning. She would've been 72 next month. Bob, my stepdad and her husband of 30 years, was laid up in the hospital with swelling in his right leg, and they realized this was the first time in their entire marriage they had not been able to celebrate a holiday together. So, when he was released on Tuesday, Mom was going to make up for it.
"I'm going to make a traditional Fourth of July supper," she told him. "Fried chicken and potato salad."
"You don't look good," said Bob. "Go home."
"Just as soon as I get my shopping done!" said Mom, as Bob knew she would say. Mom was on oxygen for several years, the result (of course) of decades of cigarette smoking. If her routine made her short of breath, Mom didn't slow down, she just turned her oxygen up. When my stepsister Beth spoke with her last week, Mom was having trouble breathing. "Wait," she said, as she turned her oxygen up to seven. When I had been with her in March, the dial was usually set to four.
She actually seemed better in March than she did in December, the previous time I had seen her (when I took that photo). I usually see my folks once a year. But when Johnny Carson passed away in January, and his friend Peter Lassally revealed that Johnny had been having trouble breathing earlier that week, I booked another ticket to Florida. Obviously, I'm glad I took that extra trip.
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Mom went to Albertson's for chicken breast. We found the potato salad later, already made in the fridge.
A few minutes after she walked into the store, a doctor at Winter Haven Hospital got a phone call. Mom had been his secretary for 11 years and his number was in her wallet. Albertson's was calling. She'd collapsed in the store and an ambulance was being called. A woman at Theatre Winter Haven, where Mom had received three Directors Awards for her volunteer efforts, got the same call. News spread around the hospital quickly. Mom had retired from there on Thursday. The chaplain broke the news to Bob.
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Mom and Bob were happily married. I am happily married. Mom got a master's degree and so did I. She was proud of me and I will be eternally grateful for the advantages in life that she gave me.
Also, we watched a lot of TV together. To this day, when I see the American University political expert Allan Lichtman on the news, I always think of Mom and me watching his run on the 1980s game show "Tic Tac Dough." Every time he got a question right, Lichtman would grit his teeth and smile hard, and it used to drive Mom nuts. "I get so … irritated by him," she would say. "That's such a phony smile!"
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I wrote her obituary, which you can read below. I've asked you before, and I'll ask you again: Give blood. Give it for me, and give it for Mom. Mom always gave.
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ElRene A. Dorn, 71, of Winter Haven, died of a heart attack Monday, July 4, 2005, at Winter Haven Hospital. She was being treated for lung cancer.
A native of Grants Pass, Ore., she moved to Winter Haven in 1987 from Billings, Mont.
She earned a bachelor's degree from Oregon State University and her master's degree from Eastern Montana College. She taught school until 1970, then began a 34-year administrative career in mental health. She retired as an office coordinator for Winter Haven Hospital environmental services on Thursday, June 30. She was enthusiastic about golfing and knitting gifts for family members. She was active as a volunteer for Theatre Winter Haven and was a frequent blood donor.
She is survived by her husband, Robert G. Dorn of Winter Haven; two sons, Todd Barnhart of Corvallis, Ore. and Aaron Barnhart of Kansas City, Mo.; a daughter, Glenda Barnhart of Snohomish, Wash.; a stepson, Jeff Dorn of Aberdeen, S.D.; three stepdaughters, Lesli Dillon of Bellingham, Wash., Amy Kinshella of Ashburn, Va. and Beth Wood of Clovis, Calif.; a brother, Mark Axtell of Grants Pass, Ore.; 16 grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren.
She was previously married to David Barnhart of Port Townsend, Wash., and was preceded in death by a brother, Dean Axtell and sister, Garnet Blood.
Memorial donations may be sent to Theatre Winter Haven or the American Red Cross.
