Dorothy Clewett

Dorothy Clewett, 99, of Brookings died Dec. 20, 2009, at her home. 

As a very young child in Tacoma, Wash., she recalled running two blocks to see that new marvel – the automobile; 55 years later, she was able to watch men step onto the moon.

 After her father Herbert Haynes, and mother Kathryn divorced in 1915, Dorothy remained in Tacoma, living in her grandmother Haynes’ house with her sister Leola and cousin Dale. 

Dorothy attended elementary and high school in Tacoma, graduated at 17, and immediately enrolled in business college. 

A year later she moved to Oakland to live with her mother but always remained very close to her sister. During the Depression years and World War II Dorothy worked her way from the secretarial pool to executive secretary for the manager of the Oldsmobile distributorship.

In the late 1930s Dorothy met her future husband Myrl Pitts, a native San Franciscan, at a party to which she was invited by a coworker.  Dorothy and Myrl saw each other for a year or more, became engaged, but decided to delay marriage until the end of World War II. 

Myrl and Dorothy married in early 1946. Myrl was employed as an insurance broker; Dorothy  quit her job to become a wife and  two years later, a mother.

Myrl’s career required the family to move up and down the West Coast; they settled in east Whittier, Calif., in 1955. There they purchased a home and finished raising their only child, Michael. Dorothy was one of the founding members of Las Damas of Sungold and remained very active in the women’s club for the next 37 years, including a term as president.

Dorothy and Myrl enjoyed playing contract, then duplicate, bridge and spent many evenings  at cards with their friends. 

After Myrl’s death in late 1978, Dorothy and a friend, Betty Betzold, became serious about duplicate bridge and started playing competitively – and successfully – to acquire their Master Points.  Dorothy later married Glenford Clewett, but their marriage lasted only a few years before Glen’s death.

In 1993 Dorothy moved into Driftwood Estates, in Harbor.  She promptly joined two different groups of bridge players to keep herself occupied.  In her later years, her memory began to fail and she moved to an assisted living home until Michael and his wife, Marihelen, were able to take her into their home to care for her properly. During this time the only thing that truly made an impression on her were the visits of her grandson Jonathan Pitts-Campbell, from Seattle.  Dorothy passed her last years with diminishing awareness of her surroundings, but usually seemed to realize that she was surrounded by her family.

Dorothy’s ashes were placed next to those of her husband, Myrl, in Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, Calif.