Dollie K. Bittenbender
Memorial services for Dollie Kathleen Bittenbender, 92, Lawrence, will be held at 2:00 p.m., Thursday, October 28, 2010, at the First Presbyterian Church, 2415 Clinton Parkway, Lawrence, KS 66047.
Mrs. Bittenbender died Wednesday, October 20, 2010, at Brandon Woods at Alvamar.
She was born October 3, 1918, in Springfield, MO, the daughter of William Levi and Hattie Burtin Jones. Dollie grew up on a dairy and crop farm North of Springfield with two older brothers. She graduated from Pleasant Hope High School in 1935, at age 16. She completed her bachelors degree in teaching secretarial skills with a minor in mathematics, from Southwest Missouri State Teachers College in 1938. Dollie earned her masters degree in communications in 1972, at age 53, from the University of Kansas.
Starting in 1938, she taught high school secretarial skills in Eminence, MO. During WWII, she worked at Fort Leonard Wood, MO, as a secretary and then taught in Rolla, MO. Dollie taught typing, shorthand, and business finance at Haskell Indian Nations University for 15 years and retired from there in 1981. She was involved in the University Club, Zodiac Study Club, Meadowlark Garden Club, Writing For Yourself group (Babcock Place), and a women’s bridge club. She was a member of the First Presbyterian Church.
She married Clark R. Bittenbender on April 28, 1944, in Springfield, MO. They lived in Palo Alto, CA, until the end of WWII. Then they lived in Chicago, IL, until Clark finished his degree in Podiatric Medicine. In 1948, they relocated to Lawrence, and made it their home where she was a wife, mother, teacher, bridge player, gardener, and poet.
All of her life, Dollie enjoyed expressing herself in creative writing and in poetry. She published her first poem in 1952, in the Kansas Magazine, under the name Kathleen Jones. The poems she wrote from 1952 to 2009, she organized into two volumes. After 2004, she finished a volume of stories as told to her by her husband, Clark, and a volume of her own stories about happenings in her life. Dollie also loved to cook and often took food to friends or neighbors who were ill or in need.
She was preceded in death by her parents, a brother (Burt Jones), and her husband.
She is survived by a son, Lee R. Bittenbender and wife Sandy L. Brown, Lawrence; daughter, Veronica K Ashlie (fka: Carol Bittenbender), Lawrence; two granddaughters, Laura C. Bittenbender, Lawrence, and Kyra L. Martinez and husband Greg, Houston, TX; brother, Lewis Jones and wife Lucy, Nixa, MO; and eight nieces and nephews.
The family suggests memorials to the Douglas County Visiting Nurses, Rehabilitation & Hospice, Lawrence Humane Society, or charity of the donor’s choice, sent in care of Rumsey-Yost Funeral Home & Crematory, 601 Indiana Street, Lawrence, KS 66044.
Online condolences may be sent at www.rumsey-yost.com.
