Dorothy Jean White

Dorothy Jean Wild White of Chestertown, MD, passed away peacefully on Thursday December 15, 2011, at Heron Point of Parkinson’s. She was 89. She was born on October 28, 1922, in Morris, IL, the daughter of the late Everett Elmer Wild and Zella Fredericka (Hight) Wild. She was raised on a rice farm in Midland, LA, and enjoyed family picnics, fishing and swimming in the bayou. In high school, she played basketball. She attended college at the Southwestern Louisiana Institute (SLI), was a member of Alpha Sigma Alpha sorority and the SLI Marching Band playing the snare drum. She graduated with a B.A. degree in Elementary Education in 1943. She met her late husband Roland ‘Jack’ White while he was training in the US Army in LA. They were married a year later in June of 1942, just prior to beginning his overseas service during the war. While Jack was overseas, Dorothy taught 6th and 7th grades in Estherwood, LA. After WWII, Dorothy and Jack went to Ithaca, NY, where they began raising a family. Mr. White graduated from Cornell University in 1949. Following graduation the White family grew and moved and lived in numerous locations in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and Maryland while Jack continued his professional career in electronics and communications. Dorothy became a very active homemaker and stay-at-home mom, raising, nurturing and teaching her three children. She loved to garden both flowers and vegetables. She also liked to cook, read, sew, do embroidery, and travel. In 1982, upon his retirement, Dorothy and Jack moved to Jennings, LA, to be closer with her father, the rest of the Wild family and the rice farm in Midland and Welsh. She was a deacon of the First Presbyterian Church of Jennings, a member of the Jeff Davis Arts Council and supporter of the Zigler Museum. In 1991, they moved to Heron Point, a continuing care retirement community in Chestertown, MD, along with Jack’s father John Henry, as Heron Point’s first residents, to be closer with their children. She became involved in marketing and meeting with prospective residents of Heron Point, worked in the gift shop, and was very active with the Presbyterian Church of Chestertown. She is survived by two sons, Kenneth ‘Lee’ White and his wife Christine of Montgomery Village, MD, and John Everett White and his wife Mary of Arnold, MD; a daughter, Janice Elizabeth (White) Carman and her husband Bill of Murrells Inlet, SC; and four grandchildren, Kelly Ryan White of Frederick, MD, and his wife Kirsty from Edinburgh, Scotland, Sean Patrick White and his wife Alyson Scherer-White of Bethesda, MD, Laura Elizabeth (White) Alianello and her husband Jake of Cattaraugus, NY, and Matthew Mitchell White and his wife Jessica of Beaver Falls, PA; a sister Barbara Elizabeth (Wild) German in Houston, TX; and a brother, Edward Hight Wild and his wife Helen in Welsh, LA. Services and a reception will be held on Saturday, January 14, 2012, at 4 p.m. at Wesley Hall of Heron Point, Chestertown, MD. Interment will be held privately at St. Paul’s Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations in her memory be sent to the Chester River Home Care & Hospice, 6602 Church Hill Road, Suite 300, Chestertown, MD 21620, the National Parkinson Foundation, PO Box 5018, Hagerstown, MD 21741-5018; the Presbyterian Church of Chestertown, 905 Gateway Dr., Chestertown, MD 21620; or your local church.

Dorothy Jean White

October 28, 1922 - December 15, 2011