Dorothy Shea Memorial at BCRC

Dorothy Shea
Written by Nancy Oster
Presented by

When I look at the new BCRC logo, I always think of Dorothy, our angel of the BCRC.

Dorothy learned about us from her physical therapist, Eric Durak. Eric attended the first BCRC community forum where a large group of breast cancer survivors, their families, and local medical folk described their vision of the perfect place to house a breast cancer resource center. The next day he told Dorothy about it while she was having her physical therapy session.

Dorothy contacted us to offer us one of three cottages on her property to start our project. When we walked into the first one, we thought it was too good to be true... a fireplace, window boxes, a kitchen… just exactly the nurturing place we had envisioned.

But who was this lovely woman with the warm gracious smile? She was a quiet woman with a golden heart.  Dorothy gave us her cottage on Pueblo Street furnished and rent-free. When the IRS told Dorothy that she could not declare the value of the rent as a donation, we assured her that she was not obligated to do this for us. But she assured us that it didn’t matter because she saw what we were doing and she wanted to support us.

Not only did Dorothy give us a home for our center, but she also sent her gardeners to tend our lawns, a woman to clean our cottage weekly, and maintenance men to help us move furniture and fix things. Once when we had a mouse in the cottage, the maintenance guys set traps for us and then came in early each day to check the traps before we arrived in the morning. That’s the kind of support we had from Dorothy and her staff.

Once a year we’d take Dorothy to lunch to visit, laugh, and listen to stories about her latest visit with her daughter and her work with the Ponca Indians in Oklahoma or about the large group of Russian exchange students who had “camped” at her house for a few days on their trip around the country. I think she made them pancakes. People were important to Dorothy.

She was always there at our events, smiling, taking our hands, and thanking us. Us? We felt so unbelievably lucky to have her in our lives. When she called us “the girls” we always laughed. She made us feel special, but it was Dorothy who stood firmly behind us giving us the foundation to do our work from.

At her memorial last year, I expected to hear about all the things she had done for the community, but that wouldn’t have been Dorothy. Instead we heard family stories from her sister, sons, daughters, nieces, and grandchildren, filled with laughter and love for this wonderful woman who could find the joy inside each person and give it a home in her heart.

So when you sit on Dorothy’s bench, don’t be surprised if you feel someone reach over to take your hand, listen intently to your thoughts, then fill you with lightness and purpose. That would be Dorothy.

We are all very happy to dedicate this lovely bench to this extraordinary woman, Dorothy Shea.

Presented by Nancy Sweet

Angels have no ID bracelets on them.
No features glow with heavenly delight.
Given that their wings are made of feeling,
Each flying angel’s given to concealing
Love’s plumage like a rainbow in the night.
Shyness cloaks the halos that surround them.