Dorothy Stier 1930-2016

My mother came of age in a unique time for women. She went to college at the end of the World War II when, largely in response to the fear of unemployment on the return of servicemen from the war, women were being strongly encouraged to limit themselves to the role of homemaker.

And that was perhaps especially true for college educated women. Working class women, even then, often had to work. But as the middle class expanded in the post-war years, the middle class idea of marriage became ever stronger. So women like my mother were encouraged by parents, like my grandparents, who tremendously valued education, to get a very good education. And they were then encouraged to stay at home with their children rather than enter the work world.

Despite some appearances, my mother never really fit that mold. She worked almost her entire life.

She was a telephone operator as soon as she could legally work—or perhaps a bit before.

After she got married, she worked as a clerk and a buyer in a store in Cambridge.

When she moved to Liberty with my father, she was an office manager at a local insurance agency.

And of course, she soon took over running Stier’s Hotel. Although it was a summer resort, it kept her working 12 hours a day, six or seven months a year.

Mom did almost everything at the hotel outside the kitchen. She ran the front office, managing the reservations. She did the books and wrote the checks to our employees—even when a dishwasher was drunk and belligerent. And she took on the almost impossible job of seating guests together in our dining room, where her smart choices created lifelong friendships and a few second marriages.

When we sold the hotel and my sister and I were heading for college she decided to go back to work. She started as an examiner and then became a caseworker for the Sullivan County Department of Social Services.

A year or so later, I was talking to a younger woman with an MSW about my mother’s new career. She said that someone with no formal training in the field shouldn’t be doing this work. But my mother always said that raising two children was the best possible training for being a caseworker. And, she would point out there were very few MSW’s in Sullivan County at the time and if the County wanted to hire an educated, smart woman they could hardly do better than hiring her.

And that turned out to be right.

As a caseworker she ventured into difficult places in the county, places where troubled families lived. Sometimes my father couldn’t quite believe she was going there on her own.

She went because she was committed to helping children. And I don’t think anything made my mother more pleased than to get letters from the children she had rescued from those families and placed in better circumstances. She often followed these kids for years, checking in on them and helping them find the resources to get a good education. In those letters, some of which she got as recently as the last year or so, the kids she helped, now adults, reported on their work and the creation of their own families. They were full of thanks for all that my mom had done for them.

After a number of years as a case worker, my mother was given a top job in the County Department of Social Services, as Director of Administrative Services. She enjoyed the higher pay and the responsibility, which drew on the business skills she developed at our hotel. But she often said she missed working with the clients, and especially young people, she had worked with as a caseworker.

Until I got a couple of Facebook messages from co-workers, I hadn’t quite realized how much she was appreciated there. A few of her co-workers wrote to say how well and fairly the Department of Social Services was run when she was there. And others wrote to say that my mother had brought them into the agency even though they didn’t have all the necessary qualifications and supported them in different ways as they learned to do their jobs.

Mom was brought up at a time when the ideal of female domesticity dominated our culture. But because she never quite fit within it, she was a role model and supporter of women who grew up at a time when that ideal was being radically challenged.

Mom was not a vocal feminist. Perhaps she wouldn’t have called herself a feminist at all. But she certainly believed women could do anything men could do.

And she certainly made me a feminist even before I knew what it was, because my mother showed me that there were no limits to what women could do.

It was not just her hard work that convinced me of that. It was that she was strong and fearless and outspoken in how she did her work, and also in how she raised us, which sometimes actually embarrassed me, as you will see in a moment. I already mentioned the difficult circumstances she dealt with as a case worker. So let me tell you about her fearlessness in other circumstances.

One made a big impression on me. Visiting Jefferson’s Monticello we trailed behind one of the docents who pleasantly informed us where the “servants” lived. My mother did not miss a beat as she shouted out, “you mean slaves, don’t you?”

A small circus would often come to town and plant itself on Eagle Drive. My mother would take us most years. And, she’d point out that typically the ring master, clown, dog trainer, and high wire walker were all the same person.

One year I had to go to the bathroom and of course she took me out of the big top—or small top, actually. But the ticket taker wouldn’t let us back in.

I, of course, was devastated. But my mother wasn’t going to let me be disappointed or, perhaps more importantly, let either of us be cheated.
So we wandered around to the side of the circus tent and my mother found a loose spot where it was not tight to the ground. We both snuck under it and returned to our seats. I was scared doing it but she insisted. And as you can imagine, it was a lot easier for me than for her to climb under the tent.

This wasn’t the only example of her breaking and entering. She did some second-story work more than once at our hotel. We had a guest  we called the towel lady, who would steal sheets and towels and put them in her suitcase. The chambermaids would report that each day another sheet or towel had disappeared. So, while the towel lady was eating dinner the night before she left, my mother went to her room and removed all the sheets and towels from her suitcases.

I’ve talked mostly about my mother’s career because that was perhaps the most distinctive feature of her life. But despite doing all that work, she was the best possible mother.

In later life she wasn’t the most cuddly of mothers, but I remember a lot of cuddling early in my life.

She fed us and bought us clothes and, until we got old enough to walk, took us to school in the morning and Hebrew School in the afternoon. She went to school plays and sporting events.

And I should add that she did most of the work around the house, enabling my father to go to so many meetings and do the work he did in our community. All that my father did for this village and town—for this synagogue, for the Sullivan County Community College, and for Community General Hospital—wouldn’t have been possible without her support, including her emotional support, of him.

But when I look back, the most important thing she did as a mother was believe in my sister and me and stick up for us.

My confidence in myself is almost wholly a product of her thinking I was the greatest thing in the universe. (My sister may believe that mom thought she was the greatest thing in the universe, but I can assure her that it was me.)

It’s not that she thought I could do no wrong. She would make it clear to me when I disappointed her. But she didn’t like other people saying I did anything wrong. And she always defended me, especially when she thought I was being treated unfairly.

I had a teacher in second grade who seemed to have a thing about Jewish kids—or maybe it was this particular, slightly obnoxious Jewish kid. Just as she did at the circus, she made sure I got treated fairly.

Sometimes she defended me more than she should have. Harry Beck and I never got along well—and actually still don’t as I blocked him on Facebook last year. Once, in seventh grade, when we got into a fight, our mothers got into it with each other as well. And Harry and I started talking to each other long before Barbara Beck and my mother did. I don’t know if Barbara Beck is still alive but if she is, someone better warn her to watch out for my mother when they both get to heaven.

So even if sometimes she wasn’t fair to others, my mother’s faith in and support of me was so critical to my becoming the person I am today.

My mom had a hard time in her last years.

Losing my father was very hard for her. My parents were totally attached and devoted to one another and, as he told her, she took care of him incredibly well during his last illness, as she had done throughout their 59 years together.

And then her various illnesses began to catch up to her. I have to stop and say here that if you smoke, please stop. And I also have to say that if you complain about the high cost of medical care, my mom is a good example of how valuable it is. Despite having pretty much the same genetics, habits, and medical problems of her parents, modern medicine helped her out-live them by 18 years.

But she had many ailments in those 18 years. When she moved to the Philadelphia area, I would take her to doctors pretty frequently. Once, when I was filling out a medical information form at the office of a new doctor, she said to me, “Don’t you think it would be easier if we just put down all the things I don’t have?”

Mom actually was very sick when we realized that she wasn’t getting the kind of medical care she needed and encouraged her to move to the Philadelphia area where we could supervise her care. Moving was difficult for her. Except for her four years at Syracuse University and one year in Cambridge, she had lived her whole life in Sullivan County and loved the area and her friends here. But many of those friends, and most importantly my Dad, were gone and, ever practical, she decided to move.

And I have to say that while my mother and my wife Diane did not always get along well, my mother owed her recovery at that time to Diane’s vigorous and forceful medical advocacy on her behalf, because Diane is like my mother in being strong, fearless, and outspoken.

When she moved down here, mom was in a rehab facility and, at the beginning, we were concerned that she was not going to recover. But she slowly regained her strength and was able to move to Dresher Estates where she lived until her death.

Mom enjoyed living at Dresher. She was not a big joiner of activities but she liked to play bingo and take the occasional trip to a casino. And in one way it was perfect for her. The food was just good enough to eat, but not so good that she had nothing to complain about.

And it got better because she frequently gave the chef instruction on how to cook better Jewish food for a large number of people.

As my mom got older, it became harder for her to get around and she was mostly confined to her wheel chair. But while she was physically restricted, and became a little forgetful, she remained mentally sharp and never lost her sense of humor. Despite her exhaustion she made all of us, including the doctors and nurses laugh many times in her last few days.

I will miss her humor and her feistiness and her fearlessness. Or maybe I won’t because they are all part of me now. And for that great blessing, I will be grateful until the day I too die.