Dotty West
Born: October 17, 1926, Stowe, VT, USA
Name at Birth: Dorothea Lucy Fessenden
Died: October 1, 1987 (age 60), Arlington, VA, USA
Occupation: Homemaker, Office Manager
🕒 Timeline
Dorothea Lucy Fessenden was born in Stowe, Vermont, the daughter of a university professor and a homemaker. The third of five children, she had two older sisters and two younger brothers. Known from childhood as “Dotty,” she occasionally appears in records under the more common name Dorothy, a mistake that followed her throughout her life.
When Dotty was fourteen, her family relocated to Topeka, Kansas, after her father accepted a tenure-track position at Washburn University. By then, her oldest sister, Lillian, was already married and remained in Vermont, though the two sisters stayed in close contact throughout their lives.
Although encouraged to pursue a college education, Dotty preferred a more practical path. She enrolled in business school and earned a two-year diploma in Legal Secretarial Studies. Shortly before graduation, she began dating Carl West, an Army Air Forces serviceman stationed at nearby Fort Riley. The couple married just eight days after she completed her program.
Their first child, Jay Christian “Christie” West, was born at Fort Riley on April 18, 1948. Carl had already been assigned to RAF Lakenheath in England, and Dotty followed several months later with their infant son. Tragically, the family arrived during one of the last major polio epidemics in England, and Christie died from the disease on November 28, 1949. The loss devastated both parents, but grieving together ultimately strengthened their marriage.
Nearly a year later, on October 29, 1950, their daughter Amanda was born at RAF Lakenheath. Dotty was initially overprotective of her surviving child, though she gradually relaxed as the family settled into everyday life. Carl was reassigned, this time to Air Force headquarters in Washington, DC, in 1952, and the family moved to nearby Arlington, Virginia. When Carl retired from the Air Force in 1962, he began a second career as a technical designer for a government contractor.
After spending more than twenty years as a homemaker, Dotty elected to return to work part-time in 1970, securing a secretarial position at the same aerospace firm where Carl worked. She was quickly promoted into a full-time office management role in the contracting department. In 1973, after Amanda had married and left home, Carl and Dotty relocated to McLean, purchasing what they expected would be their retirement home. Dotty remained with the company until Carl’s untimely death in 1981, after which she chose early retirement.
Following Carl’s death, Dotty spent increasing amounts of time with Amanda and her family. After Amanda’s divorce in 1982, Dotty sold her home in McLean and moved into Amanda’s Arlington house. She contributed part of the proceeds from the sale toward Amanda’s mortgage while retaining the remainder as a retirement fund.
Dotty delighted in helping raise her grandsons and quickly resumed the role of homemaker. At the same time, she maintained an active social life and remained close to friends and extended family. Though she never removed her wedding set and never stopped loving Carl, she eventually found companionship again when she met fellow widower Kurt Ipswich in early 1987. The two understood one another’s losses and developed a close relationship, but chose to move slowly out of consideration for Amanda’s family.
That future together never came to pass. Dotty was killed in the October 1987 automobile accident that also claimed the life of her grandson Phillip King. She was sixty years old.
Dotty West was portrayed by Beverly Garland †.
Timeline
| October 17, 1926 | Born, Stowe, VT, USA |
| May 16, 1947 | Business Diploma, Legal Secretarial Studies, Topeka Business Institute |
| May 24, 1947 | Marries Carl West, Manhattan, KS, USA |
| April 18, 1948 | Son Jay Christian “Christie” West born, Fort Riley, KS, USA |
| November 28, 1949 | Son Christie West dies, RAF Lakenheath, Brandon, Suffolk, England |
| October 29, 1950 | Daughter Amanda Lucy West born, RAF Lakenheath, Brandon, Suffolk, England |
| July 14, 1981 | Carl West dies, McLean, VA, USA |
| November 27, 1982 | Moves in with daughter Amanda King, Arlington, VA, USA |
| October 1, 1987 | Killed in a vehicle crash, Arlington, VA, USA |