With a personality, character, and inner strength as fierce as her red hair, Dorothy Ellen Morrissey Szekely Holt lived life on her terms, determined to blow past every goalpost set for her, and surpassing everyone’s expectations. She went by many names, and wore many hats: Dot, Dots, Dotsy Motsy, Dottie, Dottie Karate, Red Dot, Mama Dot, Red, Grandma Dot, D, and Gigi. She was a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a high school dropout, a wife, mother, a volunteer, a community worker, a GED candidate, a college student, a graduate student (twice), a professor, a business school administrator, a widow, a crime victim’s advocate, a teacher, a grandmother, a bride (again), a cancer patient, a fighter, a warrior, and an inspiration to everyone whose path she crossed.
Born in 1948, the second of four children of William Patrick Morrissey and Mary Agnes Morrissey (née Dillon), Dorothy enjoyed a childhood filled with the love of her devoted parents, and the simple pleasures of bike rides, summer swims in the Long Island Sound, family gatherings, and making the best out of the little they had. At the age of 14, her world changed with the tragic death of her mother, beginning what would be a lifetime of challenges that Dorothy would stare in the face and overcome with a sometimes quiet, but more often bold tenacity most often reserved for fictional characters.
Struggling to raise her two younger brothers, maintain a household, and finish her education, something had to give, so Dorothy left school without a high school diploma. She cooked, she cleaned, she got a job, and paid rent to her father to help him make ends meet. Along the way she fell for a handsome Air Force veteran, James Z. Szekely Jr., whom she married in 1970 and with whom she raised two children.
Deciding that she could not teach her children the importance of education if she hadn’t herself finished high school, Dorothy earned her GED as a working mother, and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from the Audrey Cohen College (now Metropolitan College of New York), and two masters’ degrees, from Fordham University and the City College of New York, earning a perfect 4.0 GPA each time. Dorothy worked at a community service organization as a graduate business school administrator at Fordham University, and later at Seton Hall University, and as a crime victim’s advocate.
In 1998, after 28 years of marriage, another tragedy befell Dorothy when her beloved husband Jim was lost at sea while fishing off the coast of Montauk. With her family rallying behind her, Dorothy weathered this unimaginable storm of grief, rising from the ashes to reinvent herself yet again. In 2002 she became a New York City Teaching Fellow, and taught third grade at P.S. 85 in the Bronx, eventually becoming the testing coordinator and data specialist until her retirement in 2013.
Proving that online dating can be a success at any age, Dorothy met Bob in 2004, and they dated long-distance until he proposed in 2010. In 2013, weeks after retiring, she married her sailor, U.S. Navy veteran and retired schoolteacher Robert Warner Holt, of West Tisbury. One month shy of their one-year anniversary, Dorothy was diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer in 2014. Determined to beat the odds, Dorothy began to once again “kick ass and take names.” She endured surgery and multiple rounds of chemotherapy, immunotherapy, incorporated Eastern and Western medicine and anything else she could find to fight, always guided by her mantra, “Don’t give up. Don’t give in.”
More than just a survivor and a fighter, Dorothy was the best friend, the comforting shoulder to cry on, the original life coach, the life of the party, and the last person on the dance floor.
Dorothy is survived by her adoring husband Bob; her children Denice and Jim and their respective partners, Steve and Christina; her stepchildren Ronald and his wife Louise, Rob and his wife Monica, and Briana; by her grandchildren; Myles, James, Theodore, Ryan and Benjamin; by her siblings, Dianne, Michael, and William; her sisters-in-law Carol, Edel, and Christine, her brother-in-law Ed; and by innumerable nieces, nephews, friends, and colleagues, whose lives are all the better for her having played a part.
The funeral Mass was held on Friday, May 7, at St. Frances de Chantal Church in the Bronx.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Angel Flight Northeast; 492 Sutton St., North Andover, MA 01845, or to Care Dimensions Hospice House, 125 Winter St., Lincoln, MA 01773.
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