Eulogy for Dorothy

Today is the fourth anniversary of the death of my grandmother, Janet Dorothy Wells Ennis Huggins. The following is and edited adaptation of the eulogy given at her memorial service. Wherever you're dancing today, Grandma Dorothy, you're in my thoughts and heart.

If Dorothy were here now and saw so many weeping eyes she would be among you drying your eyes and having a good time of it. She is in a better time and place … Modern folklore gives us a gauge of a woman’s tenderness. Did she cry when Ole Yeller died? Grandma Dorothy cried when Little Toot got kicked out of port.

I’m going to tell you stories about pennies and love. Pennies are a little girl’s coin and since she never got old it is appropriate that I speak of pennies. When Dorothy was a little girl she walked to downtown Cincinnati with her sister, Anna Mary in hand. She skipped and did a balancing act on the curbs, walls and fences. She did it when she was eight and she did it when she was eighty-eight. If she saw a little boy who looked like he had pennies in his hand she charmed him into letting her see and when he did (and he always did), she did the old pop-the-back-of-the-hand trick, and she became pennies richer. She originated the one-more-penny scam; in which she would approach a stranger and extend her open palm with four pennies in it and say, "Mister, my little sister lost her money and she needs one more penny to ride the bus home. We’ve walked so far today and she’s so tired and I can’t carry her any more. Please, just a penny." She knew instinctively that a man in a suit with a date on his arm was a sucker for innocent blue eyes.
She was born in New York where her dad died when she was seven, leaving her mother with nine or ten children to raise. Her name was Janet Dorothy then, but at seven she was already making decisions and defining who she became…she became Dorothy. She had wonderful stories about the gypsies who camped near the big house she lived in and how they watched Anna Mary because Anna Mary had their dark eyes and complexion. If they wanted her sister they would have to deal with Dorothy.

The 1922 equivalent of the Child Protective Services made a noise about taking the children away from her; so, Dorothy’s mother, Clara packed up the kids in the middle of the night and headed for home in Cincinnati and the German farming community of Sunman, Indiana. Clara did her best to put the children to sleep but little Dorothy was a survivor and she knew that to survive you have to be alert. She remembered the train ride in detail, right down to her white dress with the purple sleeve bands. The purple dye ran when she got a drink from the train drinking fountain and died her wrists purple.

She was a great storyteller and she told this adventure to her children and grandchildren often so they and now I cannot forget. A death, a desperate train ride, a child in a ping-pong white dress, bouncing down a rickety-rack railroad track, willy-nilly looking for a future. Life would be hard for little Dorothy. Her brothers went to the farms in Sunman, the Wells girls went to a rich, evil Cincinnati relative who put the unwanted girls to bed early so the rich children of the house could be feed cookies and milk. Dorothy would hush the hungry Anna Mary as they both watched the cookie feast while hiding like little mice behind the staircase spindles. When ever she served cookies Grandma Dorothy would tell that story starting with the train ride and ending with the very same kind of cookies she was serving. Life was hard for little Dorothy but her will was as hard as the train rails and if she were to be bounced she would choose the direction.

She began to choreograph her balancing act while collecting pennies and the little girl became a beautiful young woman who could dance. On her casket here my sister and I placed a pair of dancing shoes symbolic of another Grandma Dorothy story. She danced so much she was always wearing out her shoes and as she left the house Clara would say “Dorothy, whose shoes do you have on. Those are Anna Mary’s not yours.” Before she could deny it, she was out the door and down the street.

It was 1932, Dorothy made a curious choice: A young man who liked to sing came calling and Clara told him that Dorothy was at an audition to become a dancer. It was said in vaudeville "never follow animal or kid acts"; Clarence “Happy” Ennis and his brothers and sisters were the kids you didn’t want to follow. They were talented and they made good acts look bad by comparison. Happy didn’t know of any vaudeville auditions. By 1932 vaudeville was dead. He was headed for Vine Street before Dorothy’s mother could say "the Gaiety Theater". The Gaiety! Burlesque! Vaudevillian people didn’t even stay in the same hotels as Burlesque people. His strong hands locked around the once purple dyed wrists; he pulled her from the theater…"No wife of mine is going to dance in burlesque!" Defiantly she countered, "I’m not your wife! We’re not even engaged!" but she meant something else. And Hap Ennis replied as emphatically, “We are now!”

Dorothy was beautiful and she had the grace of a dancer, no one knew how smart she was until in retrospect we all realized how long with limited memory she conned us into thinking she didn’t have a problem. She called everyone “Honey” because she couldn’t remember your name.

She was never a candidate for the Pulitzer Prize for literature but her handwriting was a work of art with either hand. She dropped out of the 10th grade so she didn’t understand the nuances of literature and she never learned another language, but she gets the golden ticket to the pearly gates because she understood the concept the Greeks were getting at when they specified the word “love.” Where English has only one word for love, the Greeks have three. Philos, meaning fraternal love. Eros, which signifies the physical and carnal. And Agape. This is the stuff Dorothy knew so well. It was high octane and 200 proof. Agape is unconditional love. Her response to all of our sins was always "You shouldn’t have done that…but I love you anyway." Dorothy was a forgiving machine. Someone said that as you learn to forgive you are forgiven. She was a lady who forgave so fast and so completely one can visualize the angels in heaven shouting “Hosannas,” saying "Quick! Get over to that cloud and see what Dorothy is doing now.

She never judged; she listened and counseled. She never criticized; she always encouraged.

There never was a child she did not love and there never was a child who did not love her…and she made you think she loved you most of all.

Eternity is divided in to seconds and a life is explained by little things. There are bits and pieces of Grandma Dorothy that linger: "Go to the dance with whoever asks you. When you get there you can look around" When I was a little girl, my grandma would gather the little girls around her jewelry box and we would gaze, gape-mouthed at the treasures she received from the countless men who pursued her “Keep the ring,” she admonished. “It’s what you get for the trouble.”

There came a time when she didn’t remember any of us but I believe she could see herself in everyone and she loved and trusted what she saw. She couldn’t remember her stories, but that was okay, we had learned them. And just in case we became confused and troubled and could not see her in the shell she occupied for the last part of her life, she left us a gift. The essence of her was there; her vocabulary was reduced to "wonderful,” “beautiful,” “lovely” and “sweet.” She knew Cole Porter and George Gershwin where she was and is now. All you had to do was begin a tune; her toe would tap; her shoulders would roll; and her body would sway saying “Dorothy is here.” But she wasn’t really with us. For a long time she had been dancing on the hardwood floor of the Island Queen as it steamed up the Ohio River to Coney Island. And she followed the advice of my Uncle Tim who at four or five years of age would say “If you ist goink on dat dance floor you ist goingk wit no one but my pop.”

The last time my father saw my Grandma Dorothy, he sang her favorite song. At Dorothy’s funeral, my father called his sister, Janet to the podium to help him read the words to a song and help recreate that tender moment with his mother.

He said, “I called Sis to the podium to help me with this because Happy Ennis took her to see the movie “Hello Frisco” in 1943 when she was seven or eight” Janet remembers the occasion and the song, I remember Happy singing it to Mother.”

He read: You’ll never know just how much I loved you…”

Janet read: “You’ll never know just how much I cared…”

It was too much. They are the children of a would-be dancer and a vaudevillian. They SANG the rest of the song.