DOROTHY STREATER GAITHER

       Dorothy Streater Gaither, 81, died suddenly, December 11, after a difficult illness at Winchester Medical Center and the Envoy of Winchester rehabilitation facility.

        She is survived by her husband of 60 years, George M. Gaither, and three of the five children she bore: Dr. Neal Gaither of Winchester, Mrs. Emee Miller of South Bend, Indiana, and Bruce Gaither of Los Angeles, California.  Dorothy lived in Mexico for ten years, and a daughter, Anne Gaither, contracted a rare disease in infancy in Mexico City and was institutionalized in the United States.  She died at 13.  A son, George Gaither Junior, died at 40 in Winchester after ten years in Puerto Rico.

“Baby Dot”, her nickname, was a remarkable woman.  She was born to a well-to-do family in Greenville, Mississippi, in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression.  As a child, she never knew there was a depression.  Her parents moved from Greenville to the nearby small town of Rosedale and lived there until her marriage to her present and only husband.

        A remarkable beauty, she was the toast of The Delta, the Mississippi area on the banks of the great river from Memphis to Greenville.  She made her debut in 1950 at the age of 17, at the Cotillion Debutante Ball in Greenville.  Months later, she was legally adopted that same year by the City of Daytona Beach in Florida, where her family spent much of the summer each year, in recognition of her fame through a single photograph that was used often by Daytona to highlight the city’s beauty.  Her parents pressured her to participate in various beauty pageants, but she resisted…usually successfully.

        Dot (preferring to drop “baby”) was a professional doll maker.  She made, bought, traded, sold, collected and has left a collection of substantially more than a thousand.  Some are considered to be collectors’ treasures.

        Baby Dot graduated from Stephens College in Missouri in 1952, where she became engaged to her husband, when he was a student at the University of Missouri.  She married and moved with him to Mexico City, where he worked for 10 years.  From there she moved to Connecticut, where her husband founded a marketing research company that covered 59 countries (but not the United States, which gave her the opportunity to visit Europe, Asia and Latin America with her husband from time to time).  Upon retirement they moved to Winchester in 1997.

Funeral services will be held at Omps Funeral Home at 1260 Front Royal Pike at 11:00 AM on Tuesday, December 17.

Please view obituaries and tribute wall at www.ompsfuneralhome.com