Dorothea G. Banks

Our Dorothea Banks was born in Philadelphia on November 19, 1924. Sisters, Alverta and Alice along with her brother, Daniel, Jr. remained living there. Dorothea, after graduating from Temple College, continued her education at Simmons College in Boston for a Masters Degree in social work, afterwards working in that field throughout New England and in New York City. She then applied for and received a year-long international fellowship in France to work in and travel throughout the French social-services. While still there, she was approached by the still early Peace Corps Director, Sargent Shriver, to become Deputy Peace Corps Director in the Ivory Coast. In 1962, that was the very first PC project in French-speaking Africa, one that actually included establishing the Peace Corps in two other countries, Niger and Senegal. After her regular two years service in Abidjan-and throughout the country-she returned to the United States, shortly after, she applied to join and work at the United Nations in its UNICEF agency, where she served both in New York and for several years in New Delhi, India. Following that, she retired due to severe illness, returning to live in Manhattan until 1991 when she began sharing life with her long-time friend and very important other in his very old Cape Cod house in Orleans, Massachusetts. Soon following that, they acquired a petite case (wee house) near Avignon in the south of France where they spend most summers and occasional other times with occasional side visits here and there to Scotland, China and Switzerland. Dorothea throughout her life, always remained essentially very private, quietly but most actively involved in a wide range of social and cultural activities. These included especially a deep interest in and action in African-American concerns along with personal involvement in civil rights-for example, her early dangerous participation in one of the earlier Freedom Rider marches in Mississippi. Almost never mentioning it, she nonetheless shared her memories and real fears with Bruce MacKenzie—who had found a variety of weak excuses not to join the risk-prone march himself-quietly recalling being attacked by vicious police dogs and constantly being threatened by rifle and shotgun-bearing residents in local graveyards and churches where they were forced to sleep. Quietly, indeed, but how solidly human she always was. At the same time, she could and often did show her irrepressible very personal joie-de-vivre along with a very finely-honed, high-style appreciation of fine clothes, fine cuisine and intellectual curiosity about all aspects of political and even abstract economic theories. For all of her many constantly foreign-travelling years of such warm relationships with kindred if mostly liberal spirits, in France, America and India, she always remained a strongly very loyal American, in most ways actually conservatively appreciating all the values and realities that our wonderful—if now so harshly-divided, economically-challenged country has offered to her. And, those of us who have had the joy of living them with her. She would without any question have sharply questioned even the limited publication of this all-too-brief, clearly partial and seriously personal tribute to her quietly meaningful life but to those who have loved her so long and dearly will have to somehow accept that risk-in witnessing our deepest, long-living and fondest memories of our love and friend, Dorothea Banks, may she indeed rest in peace. A memorial service will be held on Friday, November18, 2011 at 10:30am at the Church of the Holy Spirit, 204 Monument Rd, Orleans, MA. For online condolences please visit us at www.nickersonfunerals.com