Elizabeth Gibson Doris

Birthplace: Salt Lake City, Utah

Hometown: Salt Lake City, Utah until 2003, then moved to Oceanside, California for 12 years

Names of My Parents and Their Birthplace: Georgia Reynolds Gibson, Salt Lake City, Utah and Frank Macquarie Gibson, New South Wales, Australia

Education / Occupation: Graduated from the University of Utah. Employed by the Granite School District as a Media Specialist / Librarian until her retirement. After retirement, she was involved with volunteer work at the Easter Seals Society, Arthritis Foundation and assisting first graders with reading.

Spouse: Married Klaas Derk Doris in the Salt Lake Temple, August 23, 1938.

Together they raised three daughters: Kathleen Doris Morgan, Oceanside, California; Elizabeth Ann Doris Hickman, Dallas, The Woodlands, Texas; and Georgia Ann Doris, Orta San Giulio, Italy. Her husband preceded her in death on February 24, 1977. Her great-grandson, Zake Harrison Morgan, age 21 years preceded her in death on June 16, 2014. She is survived by 11 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren.

Date of Death: October 7, 2015, Vista, California

Hobbies: Reading, crossword puzzles, handicrafts, attending the Utah Symphony and the theater, and watching golf and the Jazz on TV.

Mom most remembered for . . . . . . .

Walking to my first day of school, holding her hand, looking up and thinking how pretty she was. Mom always looked nice when she went out; adornment with a string of pearls, earrings and lipstick.

Mom created a magical Christmas morning. Our living room was like a page from a storybook. We lined up at the closed living room door as she lit all the candles, turned on the tree lights before she opened the door. I always had a pile of gifts, beautiful handmade clothes, always a doll, always thoughtful selections no matter how old I was.

Mom made me beautiful costumes for Halloween, presents at Christmas (wedding dress for me that matched the one on my doll), school and church programs (Martha Washington, the angel behind Joseph and Mary) and a little Dutch girl for Halloween. She had an artist’s eye for color and detail.

I asked her years later if she remembered the school play about Marsha Washington and what she specifically remembered. She said that she looked at me and thought what a pretty little girl I was. She often made that comment to me, that she had three pretty daughters.

To follow number three, I always had the prettiest dresses to wear to church on Christmas, Easter, my birthday and the first week of school. She made the dresses and we shopped for the fabric together, going from store to store to find the fabric that we both liked.

I took private violin lessons for six years which I never practiced for after the first year! Mother would come home from work and drive me to the lesson, sit in the car for an hour during cold winters and hot summers.

I always like remembering the time we spent together while she laid in bed recovering from her second back operation. In those days, it was months in bed. I sat in the chair next to her bed and enjoyed many evenings watching TV. She had to depend on me and I loved her for that.

She taught me to say my prayers before going to bed, and read to me from the Book of Mormon when I came home from summer camp with a broken eardrum. – Georgia

Sewing my school clothes, Easter and Christmas outfits. When I got to high school, she and I would look at the name-brand outfits that girls my age were wearing at the time such as Lanz dresses, Joyce shoes and Jantzen skirts and sweaters. For the Lanz dresses, Mom and I would purchase similar material and cut and sew new outfits to look just like the clothes we observed at the stores already made. As far as the shoes and the Jantzen outfits, I was given a sweater and knit skirt and I had a pair of Joyce shoes. Mom always saw to it on the limited budget she managed, we had what we needed.

How worried she would get when as a kindergartner through second grader, it would take me an hour longer to walk home from Highland Park Elementary School than a boy the same age who lived at the top of the hill from our house. The distance from school was a mere 3 plus miles south of our home on 27th South.

The memories of Christmas. Each year was better than the last. Even as a teenager, I had a difficult time falling asleep the night before because I was so excited to see what I would be getting the next day. I had long given up the thought of Santa Claus as the bearer of my gifts, but I still retained the same sense of awe, wonder and elation I had as a young child when Christmas day finally arrived. I do not remember ever being disappointed in the gifts I received.

I remember going shopping with Mom or Dad for the perfect blue spruce Christmas tree that was well balanced and of the exact height to fit in our living room; assisting with putting the decorations on the tree and her exacting manner of putting the silver tinsel on the tree . . . we started at the bottom of the tree and each piece of silver tinsel had to be placed on the branches. If it was not placed to Mom’s satisfaction, she would take that piece of tinsel off the tree and replace it to her liking.

I remember Mom making us stay in our bedroom until all of us were awake, then we would wait in the hall until she turned on the Christmas tree lights and Christmas music. Mom then would open the door to the living room. I remember our gifts in separate piles so that we could go right to our own pile which was always at the left end of the sofa. We each took a turn opening one gift at a time . . . no ripping them open all at once and not paying attention to what the other sister got!

I remember after Thanksgiving, Mom giving me the Montgomery Ward Catalogue and going through each of the pages full of toys and picking the toys I wanted. One Christmas, I had asked for a bride doll I found in the Montgomery Ward Catalog and Mom took the doll I received the Christmas before and made a beautiful wedding dress including the veil and shoes. I still have that doll among my possessions.

I remember our Christmas socks plump full of the following: Orange, large, red, shiny Delicious apple, banana, large candy stick or cane, nuts and candies, especially the gum and Lifesaver book of rolls of candy. I would take all the contents of the sock out several times Christmas day and put them all back.

I remember vividly my Easter dresses that Mom made. We always had a new dress for Easter. As I write this, I remember a dotted Swiss lavender dress with a purple velvet sash and bow, a pink checked long-waist dress, a navy-blue worsted wool crepe suit and she allowed me to wear a pair of navy 3” heels, a multi-pastel colored plaid dress (it snowed on Easter that year and I remember falling on the sidewalk slush outside Crystal Heights Ward), etc.

The Easter baskets Mom made for me over my childhood were exquisite, just like the department store ones. The basket was tied off with a huge bow. Inside the basket were strings of green cellophane grass strips. In the center of the basket was a sugar egg that was open at both ends (I suspect created by my Dad who was an artist using the medium of sugar and frosting). Inside that egg was a small scene. Added to the basket, Mom put colored eggs she had made, a large chocolate bunny, candies and jelly beans of all sizes.

Halloween was another great day of celebration. Mom made me new costumes every year . . . gypsy, Dutch girl, clown, etc. Until I was old enough to go with friends “Halloweening,” Mom took me out and I never got what I thought was enough candy. It was usually pretty cold at Halloween time with skiffs of snow on the ground.

I remember sitting on Mom’s bed as a very young child when she was sick. I remember worrying about her health and whether or not she would live to raise me. That was my biggest childhood fear.

When Mom was put to bed because she was having problems with her third pregnancy, Mom, Liz and I moved in with Mom’s parents so Mom could stay in bed and be taken care of by her Mother, my grandma. My grandpa walked me to the bus stop each morning and I rode the bus to and from their house to Highland Elementary School each day. I was able to catch the bus after school by myself and this went on for several months until after Georgia’s birth. I was eight years old and in the third grade at the time.

I remember when Mom had her first back surgery, she couldn’t leave the house to shop. I was about 14 years old. I was given a list of items to purchase and I was able to do some of the shopping. I remember that Georgia was starting kindergarten that year, and Mom was unable to sit at the sewing machine. She instructed me how to make the dresses, and I was able to put those little dresses together with Mom’s instructions. Mom was able to hem them after I had Georgia stand on the kitchen table marking the hem length from the table and placing pins at the exact spot where the hem was to be turned.

Mom found a piano teacher when I was about 9 years old and I rode my bicycle to her home once a week for the next 4 years until I told the teacher I was through. I went home and told Mom I quit and she was not very happy with my decision.

I remember the good Sunday meals we came home to after Sunday School each week. When Georgia was little, she would only eat chicken, so Mom always made fried chicken for dinner until Georgia outgrew that period of her life. Mom stayed home from Sunday School to make dinner and then would go to the Sacrament services later in the day with the family.

Volunteer work after she retired. She volunteered with Easter Seals, Arthritis Foundation and an elementary school to assist first graders who were just learning to read. – Kathie

Rainy days or more accurate, time spent at home, Mom liked to . . . . . . .

Listen to the musical, Les Miserable. She also enjoyed classical music with opera on Saturday from New York. She read books that tried to explain a world of suffering like, “Why Bad Things Happen to Good People.

After retirement, she made each daughter a lovely wool couch shawl for their homes.

She liked watching golf and the Jazz basketball games. – Georgia

Until I left home at age 20 years, Mom had returned to work at the University of Utah Bookstore and did that to help pay the cost of my tuition and books. She later attended school to get certified to become a media specialist and obtained work as a librarian with the Granite School District. When Mom was at home, she continued to busy herself with the rearing of my two sisters and caring for her own mother, who had moved in with us when I was about 14 years old. A couple of years later, Grandma moved to California and lived with Aunt Mary. Mom also helped our Dad in his bakery by going there after her work day to assist him in his duties. The following are activities I remember her doing while at home and with the family.

Time spent at home, Mom before TV: Kneaded and baked bread, fixed meals, washed clothes and hung them out on the clothesline, did the usual housework duties, sewed clothing, mended socks, etc.

On Christmas evening she taught me how to play the games I received for Christmas. During Christmas vacation, she taught me how to do my art set that I was given each Christmas.

After TV: We watched TV together in the evenings. On Saturday evenings. our dinner was in front of the TV so we could watch the Honeymooners, Lawrence Welk and other shows we enjoyed as a family.

Mom liked the Opera presented by Texaco each Saturday and I listened to that each Saturday while doing my chores which pretty much took the full day! (Dusting the venetian blinds, washing the kitchen floor on hands and knees, cleaning the bird cage and cleaning the whole bathroom).

One of my earliest memories as a pre-school child was bedtime when Mom would turn on the radio to the classical music station. I fell asleep to the music which only lasted for one hour. If I hadn’t fallen asleep before that program ended, I found it very difficult to quieten my body down for sleep.

As a retired person at home, Mom read all kinds of different books . . . religious, inspirational, biographies, etc., and did the daily crossword puzzles from the newspaper, watched PBS, listened to music on her “stereo, did handicrafts, watched golf and the Utah JAZZ. – Kathie

Mom's best qualities . . . . . . .

Was not bigoted.

Questioned injustice in her world.

Was a good employee, responsible and hard working.

Honored truth. – Georgia

Honest

Ethical

Fair-minded

Artistic

Wanted more for her children than she had been given

Sacrificed her needs and wants for her family

Didn’t follow the crowd. Stood up for what she believed even if she was the only one standing I remember her battling the whole ward about the summer carnivals the church in those times put on to make money to run the individual wards. Mom was in the primary presidency at the time and thought the games they played were teaching children the art of gambling at very young ages. It wasn’t too many years later, the church stopped the carnivals for the same reason. - Kathie

Few people knew . . . . . . .

As a young woman in college, she worked as the secretary for the head of the University Theater Department.

She appeared on television for a volunteer program (Easter Seals) that she participated in. She appeared with the family that she visited two times a week that had a child with a severe disability from birth. Her role was to help the family members cope. This could be by just listening to the frustrations of Mom and Dad or tending the child while the Mother left the home for time out. Mom did this for many years because this child, a little girl, lived for many years. Mom also volunteered at the Utah Arthritis Association and went to the school that she had been a librarian at to help kids with their reading.

She went to see the movie Woodstock with a young me. She had read in one of the woman's magazines that parents should see this movie with their children. She didn't like it. I did.

Mom went to Disneyland with me and Aunt Mary and all three of us enjoyed stuffing ourselves in the rides. She and I also went to Catalina Island and Hawaii. We also visited The Homestead and Mirror Lake (in Utah), short day trips to enjoy the landscape. – Georgia

How talented she was

That she was the one who influenced me to try different types of music; e.g., she watched Handel’s Messiah on PBS, but it was a different rendition . . . it was Handel’s Messiah, “A Soulful Celebration” . . . . . . a gospel album that uses different genres of African American music: Hip hop, spirituals, blues, jazz fusion, big band, ragtime, and R & B. I was hooked!

She was painfully shy

Asked me at the age of 8 or 9 what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said I wanted to be an elevator operator and I was very serious about this! Mom was just as serious and told me that was a job for someone else, but not for her daughter. I was to go to the university . . . no ifs, ands, or butts. Education was a must for her daughters.

Very determined.

Goal oriented

Advocated for the less advantaged

A perfect night out . . . . . . .

Going to the theater at the University of Utah or a concert at the tabernacle with her friends, Julia and Carla who were teachers at the same school Mom was a librarian. She did this for many years. – Georgia

Mom enjoyed going to the University of Utah Theater, Utah Symphony with her friends and colleagues. When I visited her without the children, she and I would go to the theater and symphony. When she moved to California to live with me, the evenings became afternoons, and we went to get our hair done every Saturday and had lunch at a restaurant. – Kathie

Mom always wanted to . . . . . . .

Travel and said that when she died she hoped she would be able to visit all the places she saw on PBS travel programs. – Georgia

Have a larger, more modern home than she had. When I started dating and bringing boys into the home, she was embarrassed by our living circumstances . . . I wasn’t, I didn’t care. – Kathie

The hardest thing mom ever had to do . . . . . . .

Get the courage to go back to college as an older woman and earn another degree in library science. She already had a teaching degree to teach high school home economics.

Deal with the death of her husband

The couple of weeks before her own death.... to go through with her own death. – Georgia

Let go of her daughters . . . . . we all left the Utah valley in time. As her eldest daughter, this was so painful for both of us. I didn’t want to leave her after I married . . . in fact, I shortened my honeymoon just to go home to be with her. I wanted to live close to her so we could do things together. Every summer when our family vacations took us to Utah to visit Mom, it was so hard to leave her in Salt Lake all by herself. Finally, we had that opportunity for 3 years when she moved to California before her health started deteriorating.

Let go of her disappointments in life.

Deal with being moved from her board and care home that she had lived in for four years. It was difficult explaining to her all about the State Licensing Board and their policies . . . . . I do think it shortened her life because she did not understand and think she finally just gave up the battle. – Kathie

Which world event had the strongest impact on Mom (Elizabeth)?

Mom was a 1-year-old when World War I ended. Mom lived through the depression and gave birth to me three months prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 . . . World War II for the Americans was now on our soil! Although, Mom never told me exactly how this time in her life impacted her, as a young woman with a baby and a husband who was from The Netherlands and whose Mother and Father were still there during this war, it must have weighed on her greatly. I have seen the sugar rationing coupons and the information sent by the Red Cross telling of the condition of my paternal grandparents. One can only envision how very perilous and worrisome this time was for her and my Father especially with a young baby and another child who would be born just before the end of World War II. The impact would be long lasting and could be observed in some of her behaviors of non-trust in others, keeping to herself, holding her daughters close to her, learning to be very thrifty with the small amount of money my Father brought home from his bakery job(s), saving everything for the proverbial “rainy days” (dress patterns became toilet paper when there was none to buy or there was no money to buy it) while at the same time suffering from Grave’s disease, chronic kidney infections and bouts of depression. My Father also worked part-time in a tire yard, collecting tires for the war effort since he was unable to fight for his new country. It did not help my Mother much that some neighbors gossiped that my Father was Deutsch (German) verses Dutch (The Netherlands). In our world today, it is chique to be from another country, but during and after the war, it was not and people immigrating to this country survived by becoming westernized as soon as possible . . . that means learning English quickly and giving up one’s prior culture for the “American” way. All these things had a great impact on my Mother as well as my Father. - Kathie

Mom (Elizabeth) considered this to be a defining moment in life . . . . . .

I do not know whether or not Mom would think that this was a defining moment in her life, but as her daughter, I saw first her work as a librarian in an elementary school and then volunteerism to be such defining moments in Mom’s life. These experiences opened a whole new world to her. No longer was she isolated to her sometimes rigid ways of thinking, but was now involved in other children’s lives and meeting other people who didn’t think like her or even share her same values. During her retirement years, she took on volunteerism and became very intimately involved with one family’s life . . . . . . a family whose only child (for the mother, not the father) was born with osteogenesis imperfecta and was severely affected by this genetic disorder. Mom worked diligently to provide respite care for the mother and became a loving friend to her daughter. Mom felt a new purpose to her life and it gave her much anewed emotional energy to go assist this family no matter what. Mother became more open, more accepting of others and their differences as well as becoming an advocate for all kinds of injustices. During this time, she stuffed envelopes at the Arthritis Foundation and made weekly visits to one of the elementary schools to assist first graders with their reading skills. This became Mom’s passion for living and something she loved doing. She believed she was providing a worthwhile service, it brought her out of herself and it gave her greater insight and concern for people’s behaviors outside her comfort level. - Kathie

REFLECTIONS ON Mom (Elizabeth):

Thoughts of My Mom

From the moment of my birth to the moment of Mom's death, we spent seventy years and tried in the best way we knew to make each other happy. Sometimes we were misunderstood, sometimes we felt each other's kindness deeply. But we always knew that we belonged to each other.

I love you, Mom, then, now, and eternally.