Dolores Brown

OBITUARY:

Dolores B. Brown (Hughes) passed away on January 4, 2017, in the care of her daughters and Iowa City Hospice. A memorial service is planned for Sunday, January 15, at 4:00 p.m. at Collegiate United Methodist Church in Ames, Iowa. A light supper will follow.

Dolores was born on April 2, 1933, in Sandusky, Ohio, to Wesley and Lucille (Waldock) Hughes. The eldest of three daughters (Diana and Marilyn) she grew up in Kansas and Ohio and later moved with her family to Denver, Colorado. She graduated from the University of Colorado in May, 1955, with a degree in Medical Records Administration. She married Joseph M. Brown on December 29 of the same year.

Dolores was a hard worker and frequently reminisced about picking strawberries as a child and her summer job during her high school years at UXU dude ranch outside of Yellowstone. She loved making a home and raising her family, but after 15 years out of the work force she planned to return gradually with part time employment. Instead she was persuaded to head the Medical Records department at Mary Greeley Hospital, where she served ably for 24 years. Despite not knowing how to turn on the electric typewriter on her first day of work, she proceeded to move the department, and herself, into the computer age.

In 1965 Dolores and Joe moved their young family to Ames, when Joe accepted a faculty position at Iowa State University. Dolores loved being a faculty wife and living in a university community. Her life changed in 1972 with her husband’s disabling illness. She adapted courageously to a new reality, caring for Joe until his death in 2003. She supported and raised the family, and somehow managing to wring every possible bit of enjoyment from the life she had been given. She was smart, daring, and resourceful. She loved traveling with family and friends. She collected art, loved searching for a bargain, loved attending and working at Soup Supper, and greatly loved her community at Collegiate United Methodist Church. 

Most of all, Dolores had a tremendous capacity for friendship. She could talk to anyone, and she did! In the last months of her life she was still keeping up with friends from her college days and pleased to be making new friends in Iowa City where she had moved to live with her daughter. It was, however, her Ames friendships, many of them spanning five decades, which were of the deepest importance to her.

She is loved and remembered by her four daughters, Janet (Nick) Vidnovic, Carolyn Brown, Dia (John) Boyle, and Donna (Tony) Richardson, and her ten grandchildren, Nick (Amy) Vidnovic, Loren (Adam) McDonald, Ella and Anna Brown, Jack, Mary Dolores, and Joe Boyle, and Bobbie, Casey, and Betsy Richardson. In the last week of her life, she was able to meet and hold her first great-granddaughter, Annie Vidnovic.