It’s a Sunday-morning tradition Doris shares with her children – thanks to all of them just living a few minutes away from her home at Oakmont Livonia.

“All three of my children are in church with me on Sunday morning,” Doris said. “That makes me very happy.”

Religion and family are both important to her, it always has been. When she met Arthur, they came from different religious backgrounds; he was Catholic, she was Protestant. They reached a compromise that worked well for them.

“Every Sunday, we went to different churches until we could find one we liked,” Doris said. “We finally came across Grace Lutheran in Redford, and we both loved it. It was very similar to what he was used to in the Catholic Church, and I liked it a whole lot.”

A roundabout way back to Detroit

Doris was born in Dearborn, but her world would change at the age of 2 when her family moved to Manistique, in the Upper Peninsula.

“My grandfather thought my dad would make a good farmer. So he talked one of my dad’s brothers and my dad into doing it,” she said. “We were there for about six years.”

It turned out life on the farm wasn’t for them, so the family moved back to Detroit. However, since there was no kindergarten in Manistique, she had a one-year head start on her classmates. She recalled being teased by them for being younger and was afraid she’d be set back a grade.

“I probably could have been set back a year, but my mother, I knew she would want no part of that,” Doris said.

She graduated from Detroit Northwestern High School at the age of 16. Her father believed at that age, she was too young to enter the workforce. It was decided a few years of Bible college would be a good idea.

“I was plenty old enough to work, but he said I wasn’t, so that was that,” she said.

An interesting match-making question

Later, Doris worked for R.L. Polk, maintaining vehicle records. One day at work, her friend Virginia posed a question.

“She asked, ‘How would you like to go out with my uncle?’ I wasn’t sure about that,” she said. “I was wondering how old he was. Well, he was just six years older than her. So I told her to bring a picture.

“As it turns out, he was so cute. Arthur looked much younger than he really was.”
They got married in a simple ceremony. A good friend from Bible college married a pastor; the friends hosted the ceremony in their home for Doris and Arthur.

“After we got married in their home, I was so used to being in my parents’ car that when we left, I went immediately to their car. Arthur was so cute, he looked at his car and said, ‘Is anyone going with me today?’”

They raised their family in Redford before moving to what is now Oakmont Livonia, where Doris is the longest-tenured resident. The family grew to include six grandsons, two great granddaughters and two great grandsons. They were married 56 years before Arthur died in 2008.