A Tribute to Dolly

by Nancy Graham

My sister and I were not good friends when we were young.  Dolly was the first grandchild on both sides of the family and for five years had full attention of parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles.  So when I came along there were probably mixed feelings on the part of my big sister.  The earliest memories of us together come from the 16mm films taken by my father and the black and white photographs my mother meticulously put in albums.  Most show Dolly having to hold me and try to smile while I attempted to pull the ribbon from her hair.  But being five years apart meant there was little competition between us so we did our own thing and enjoyed a happy childhood in the suburbs of NYC. 

One thing we both loved as children was the annual visit to our grandparent’s home in South Hero, Vermont.  While it must have been considered a duty to our parents, we loved the old farm house, the barn and the afternoon trips to the rocky beach on Lake Champlain.  We spent the mornings at a neighbor’s farm, finding kittens in the hay loft, petting the calves, riding on the hay wagon and enjoying a life much different from that in Floral Park.  Meanwhile our father was doing repair work on the old farm house and our mother was helping Grandma cook on the wood burning stove and learning not to waste the hot water which had to be pumped in and then heated on top of the same stove.  While there was a bathroom, the outhouse was still an option as were the chamber pots in the upstairs bedrooms.   Our Grandfather loved to grow things and that trait was passed down to our father and to us.  Both Dolly and I fondly remember Grandpa’s garden.  A big bowl of fresh berries (currents, raspberries, gooseberries) was on the table for every meal along with fresh vegetables from the garden.  There were lots of flowers in the garden but gladioli were Grandpa’s specialty, something that carried on to Dolly and which she grew so well and enjoyed immensely.

When Dolly went on to Sewanhaka High School she wanted to be called Dot.  She and her friends were in a different world from mine then so most of what I remember is that they called me ‘the brat’,  She had a cadre of girlfriends who would frequent the local soda shop “Dick’s” and hope that the  boys would show up.  I don’t think she ever had a serious boyfriend but did have crushes on several teenage boys during those high school years.  Dolly kept a diary but as hard as I tried I never got to see what was written in it.

When it came time to apply to college, Dot (still Dot) wanted to go to the University of Vermont.  However, being so smart, she won a NYS Regents Scholarship and with some pressure from our parents, decided instead to go to St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY.  That was a very fortunate decision because there she met George Stade, who she married shortly after graduating and with whom she shared almost 57 years together.  At SLU, Dolly (not Dot anymore) was an outstanding student and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Beta Beta Beta.  

It was about this time that Dolly and I became close.  She and George planned a December 1956 wedding so Dolly moved back home for several months and commuted to her teaching job on Long Island.  She used George’s car, a Chevrolet with a stick shift, to go to work so when she was home grading papers at night she let me use the car.  That was so great for a high school  senior and I have always been thankful for having access to wheels at that age.  

The wedding took place on December 16, 1956 at the Floral Park Methodist Church.  Dolly looked radiant and George was a handsome groom.  Mom and Pop, Eva and Kurt all beamed  and were happy for this beautiful couple.   They then took up their lives in NYC where they spent so many years together. Children arrived in a few years: first Barry, the Eric, Nancy and finally Kirsten.  Dolly was a wonderful  wife and mother.  She made their home a welcoming place not only for the immediate family but for any friends who may be looking for some warmth and a good home cooked meal accompanied by a bit of wit and maybe some sarcasm.

Over the past years we became very close.  We would often talk about our gardening issues.  Since we both loved working in the dirt, we called it the “Fletcher Curse”.  Dolly would grouse about her problem, something called gout weed, while I complained about my nut grass.  We could compare notes about what we had in the vegetable area:  she always beat me on the greens and salad while my only success was with the tomato crop (because the growing season in upper NY state is so short.)  We both loved to grow things and so many plants in my garden bring back fond memories of Dolly.  Her gardening talents crossed over to her artistic expertise as Dolly would make beautiful pressed flower collages which she framed and now I can look at every day.

Even as a youngster, Dolly was artistic.  She could draw, paint with water colors and oils.  Later on she branched into mosaics and other handicrafts.  She could take scraps of old linens and make them into beautiful Christmas trees.  Old pieces of fabric became dolls or angels.  And plain Styrofoam cones were transformed into elegant candy trees.  But she never bragged about this talent.  She just kept using it to the enjoyment of her family and friends.

Dolly’s culinary abilities were amazing.  Her pies, all made from scratch, outshone any commercial baker.  She said it was easy, but I know that isn’t so.  Not only were they delicious, they were always decorated with the most extraordinary care.  On the top, crust was cut in leaf shapes, or twisted into braids or punched with a decorative pattern.  These were no ordinary pies.  They were the best ever.  Even before we got to desert, there were wonderful things with which to indulge:  starting with mini pizzas, pork balls and “tunnels” to name a few.  Dolly’s table was always set with a crisply starched and ironed table cloth and napkins and a beautiful flower arrangement.  The main course (usually a Thanksgiving turkey and tofurky with all the side dishes)  was always followed by a salad before desert.  One never left the Stade home hungry.

We laughed over so many things together and commiserated over others.  We talked about how no matter how old your children are, you still worry about them.  She was a wonderful daughter, taking great care of our mother, making sure she was in good hands when she was unable to live on her own.  Dolly was a great wife and mother and she was the only one who called me “SIS’.  I will miss that.

Dolly Stade b. 1934 d. 2013

Dorothy Louise Fletcher Stade was born December 5, 1934, to Elmer Lee Fletcher and Laura Fletcher, nee Brewster.  Her sister was Nancy Graham.  Her husband of almost fifty-five years was George Gustave Stade.  She had four children -- Bjorn, Eric, Nancy, and Kirsten Stade -- and three grandchildren -- Jack and Nick, and Ursula Ngoc Stade. 

Our mother was profoundly intelligent.  Her intellectual interests were broad and deep, covering nature, medicine, literature, history and politics to name a few.  She was Sir Richard Attenborough in the field, conjuring names of exotic flora from her encyclopedic botanical knowledge, all of it neatly indexed and readily retrieved.  She could pull a quote from literature to illustrate any point she wished to make. How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child was among her favorites.  She admired the founding fathers, perhaps as much for their interest in gardening as for their contributions to history.  Not surprisingly, she was a Mensa member.  I often thought I'd like to be as smart as she was.  In truth, it was probably a liability.  With those chops the times you live in must always seem insipid.   

Maybe that is why she was so funny, because humor could palliate the imbecilism to which she was so finely attuned.  Her sense of humor ranged from silly to Swiftian and encompassed everything in between.  When we gathered her house plants to donate to neighbors we came across an Afro pick with a Black Power fist stuck into the soil of a philodendron.  That combination of irony (what's a fine haired girl with New England ancestry dating to around the Mayflower doing with an Afro pick) and sincerity (because she was a free thinker, and had deep sympathy for the civil rights movement, having declined membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution because of their history of refusing to have Black performers at their concert hall) was pretty typical.  She had a special gift for the caustic.  Driving past the Takoma Park Republican Voters Garden -- a few rangy azaleas on a corner lot -- provoked one of her scornful rhetoricisms: What do you think they plant there, stink weed?  It was with utmost affection that she called her children nitwits and other more obscure terms of similar connotation from the mysterious lexicon she wielded.

More than anything else she gave.  To her husband and children, to a long list of charities.  She gave in her endless nurturing of flowers and plants, in her love of animals and nature, in the ornaments and mosaics she made, in the ink sketches of owls.  The night of her death we brought some of our mother's boxes down from the closet and unpacked two handmade cloth dolls she made for her daughters years ago. They had hand-embroidered fur-lined cloaks that could be removed to reveal elaborate skirts made from our childhood dresses, petticoats, and underneath stockings and boots she'd made from old ribbons. She was constantly sending off notes to her children and grandchildren, penned in her beautiful hand, and decorated with sketches of her beloved dog Dizzy or folkloric hearts and flowers.  The work I most associate with her is a mosaic made from the glass tiles she purchased perhaps fifty years ago, from an antique store in the Village when she and my father were living on Jane Street.  The mosaic is of a blue eyed woman with her arms wrapped around two children, one fair-haired and one with dark hair.  An art critic from the day had the audacity to review her tile work somewhat derisively, titling his piece Artsy Craftsy Betsey Stade.  He couldn't appreciate the absence of irony in her handiwork.  The things she made with her hands came from a place of pure love.

She was less interested in receiving, and though we struggled with it one had to admire her determination.  She became more and more obstinate that she'd live and die just as she chose.  I am glad that in the last few decades of her life she visited her children wherever we were - all over the Southwest, Northern California, Colorado, Counties Sligo, Dublin, and Donegal, Central Mexico - but her first choice was always the cabin set on seventy woody Adirondack acres our parents purchased in 1970 and visited every summer for the next 43 years.  Following my father's retirement, their summer vacations ran from May to October, until 2012, when even Dolly acknowledged the care and maintenance might be more than they could continue.  Towards the end she did accept a gift from my sister, who went with my parents to spend a few days in early July in the old home on the Benson - Bleecker road.  I am grateful she had those days.

The family is holding a private service at Francis Collins Funeral Home and Rock Creek Cemetery, where her ashes will be interred.  If you would like to honor Dolly, you may do so by making a donation to the Washington Humane Society in her name, or by posting your memory of Dolly as a comment to this blog.