The Indefatigable Dorothea Logan
By James Donahue
White-haired, slightly bent from early stages of osteoporosis, but ageless in her quest for life, Dorothea Logan was among the first people I met when I opened a news bureau at South Haven, Michigan. She became a close and valuable friend and companion to both Doris and me during our years in that community.
And like most of the people I loved and grew close to, Dorothea was an eccentric non-conformist. She could afford to be. She was the daughter of a noted Chicago brain surgeon who left her an unknown amount of wealth so she was free to live on a large country estate on the shore of Lake Michigan, just south of town. She kept a black family of servants who lived in a small house on the estate. This man, whose name was Henry, and his wife, cleaned and maintained the house and grounds, and took care of Dorothea’s personal needs. This left her free to be the eccentric community gad-about that set her out among the town’s fascinating characters.
My contact with Dorothea was through her work as a photographer and stringer for the television stations and daily newspapers in both Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids. When I was called to the scene of a serious traffic accident, fire and natural disaster, Dorothea was always there too.
While I would be groping my way around the accident scene in the dark, usually somewhere along the deadly Red Arrow Highway that snaked north through Van Buren County, and as red emergency lights flashed all around me, she would drive up in her late model white Ford Thunderbird with its red leather seats, open the trunk and pull out a picnic basket full of small box cameras. Dorothea would busily snap pictures of the scene with all of the cameras in her basket, then drive off into the night, personally delivering film to the television stations and newspaper offices that bought them. I don’t believe Dorothea ever did it for the money. She loved the excitement of being where the action was.
After making our police rounds every morning, it was common for Dorothea and me to meet at the Aldo Hotel in downtown South Haven to call our stories in and then share a coffee in the hotel dining area. She ran with the rich and powerful families in the area, so made sure I was quickly introduced to the lawyers, judges, the mayor and anybody else of importance. Dorothea was connected to the people who were making the news.
We still fondly remember the first time Dorothea invited us to her home for dinner. We all dressed for the occasion. The meal, a pork roast boiled with a number of fresh vegetables, was elegantly served by Henry, who dressed in the role of the butler that he was. We had the distinct feeling that we were dining in an old southern mansion with a elegant servant tending to our every need. Dorothea owned a beautiful Saint Bernard dog that was overly friendly and demanded constant attention. I like dogs but that dog seemed far too large to be a house pet and far too large for a small woman like Dorothea to keep. But that was Dorothea. She was a perfect nonconformist and she could afford to be just as eccentric as she wanted to be.
One summer Dorothea hired me to paint her house. I had never painted a house before, but she offered me a thousand dollars and agreed to buy the paint. I always could use the money so took on the job. I had a pickup truck so I bought ladders, paint brushes and all of the equipment I needed and went to work in my spare time.
That was when I realized how large a house she had. It was a massive, two-story home with attached two-car garage. A lattice and rose-covered walkway lead from the garage to a door leading to the house. A large porch was on the front of the house looking out over Lake Michigan. It took me all summer to paint that house but I discovered I really loved the work. Dorothea was usually always gone so I was alone with my thoughts and my portable radio. She wanted the white house repainted white, so I missed the excitement of seeing the place slowly change colors. But when I was finished, I knew I had done a great job. Also, while I was painting her house, the word got around that I was painting Dorothea’s house. My work must have been satisfactory because several of her many friends approached me and asked if I could paint their homes after I finished hers. And bingo; I had a house painting business going on the side.
About once a year all of the news staff in the area got invited to a public relations dinner and news conference sponsored by the local electric company. It always involved a free cocktail hour followed by a great dinner and then a speech by some high company official. We never had to take notes because we were all provided a press packet with a copy of the speech and other information. It usually always involved a report on company profits and plans for new service improvements for the next year. The point was, we just had to show up, have a good time, and turn the material in that packet into a story the next day.
One year the gathering was planned in Dowagiac, in Cass County. All of the media people from South Haven, including Dorothea and I, traveled with the publisher of the South Haven Tribune.
The drinks were flowing heavily that night and Dorothea apparently had one drink too many. I have often wondered if someone didn’t slip her a “Mickey.” In the midst of the speech we were all shocked when her head flopped over. She went into a stupor face down in an unfinished dish of green sherbet. I wasn’t sitting next to her and could do nothing about what had happened. The people around her pretended they did not see anything. When the meeting was over we cleaned her up but were unable to bring her back to full consciousness. We held her up, helped her stumble to the car and then drove her back to South Haven. She snored all of the way. Her Thunderbird was parked in my yard and Dorothea was still in no condition to drive home. So we were faced with the strange problem of somehow getting Dorothea and her car delivered home and tucking her in her bed. We were a bunch of men and nobody really wanted to do it. But we couldn’t just leave her as she was. The decision was made to drive her home and at least put her car in her garage. Fortunately, by the time we got there she was awake enough to go in the house on her own. Out of courtesy no one spoke of it again.
Dorothea traded her Thunderbird in for a new model about every three years. Just before she bought her next car, Doris and I were shopping for a “better” car, and decided to buy a used car from the Ford dealership in South Haven. I hadn’t driven the car more than a few days when it began spewing blue smoke from the exhaust pipe. That was a sure sign that the engine was burning oil mixed with the gasoline. I took the car to a mechanic I trusted. He discovered that the car’s main bearing was damaged and it was going to cost me nearly the cash value of the car to get it replaced. The dealer had poured thick oil into the crankcase to temporarily camouflage the trouble. I took the car back to the dealer and demanded a repair, at his expense. He refused to fix the car, refund my money, or take back the car. I was forced to go to another dealership and purchase another car.
When Dorothea bought her car from the same Ford dealer, she took delivery on the day that she and a friend were leaving for a trip to Florida. They drove the car to the Indiana border before noticing that the oil trouble light clicked on. Dorothea took the car into a Ford dealership and had it checked out. They discovered the car had been delivered with only the grease and oil from the manufacturer in the crankcase. The dealer had failed to put any oil in the engine. It must have been a good engine because it ran for almost a hundred miles on just the natural grease and possibly a quart of oil from the factory before the problem was discovered.
The engine was so damaged by then it was spewing blue smoke from the tail pipe every time she drove it. Dorothea took the car back to the dealership but he refused to replace the engine.
That Ford dealer made a very serious mistake when he clipped the two news reporters in the area he served. We ganged up on the business. We didn’t write stories. We just told people what he did to us where ever we went. It took us very little time to get the word around town. Within a few months the dealership was closed. Dorothea filed a complaint with the Ford Motor Company. They showed up at her door one day with a brand new Thunderbird to replace the damaged one.
I remained at the South Haven bureau for about six years before moving on. Doris and I returned to South Haven two or three times after that. It was hard to say goodbye to old friends like Dorothea Logan.
I looked up her name while preparing this story and found Dorothea’s obituary. She died in 1981 at the age of 81. There was no picture.
It is strange to realize that after all the times Dorothea and I worked side-by-side, taking pictures of fires, car wrecks and other public events, we never thought to turn our cameras on each other. I do not possess a single picture of this woman. I guess we thought our lives would go on forever in those days.
By James Donahue
White-haired, slightly bent from early stages of osteoporosis, but ageless in her quest for life, Dorothea Logan was among the first people I met when I opened a news bureau at South Haven, Michigan. She became a close and valuable friend and companion to both Doris and me during our years in that community.
And like most of the people I loved and grew close to, Dorothea was an eccentric non-conformist. She could afford to be. She was the daughter of a noted Chicago brain surgeon who left her an unknown amount of wealth so she was free to live on a large country estate on the shore of Lake Michigan, just south of town. She kept a black family of servants who lived in a small house on the estate. This man, whose name was Henry, and his wife, cleaned and maintained the house and grounds, and took care of Dorothea’s personal needs. This left her free to be the eccentric community gad-about that set her out among the town’s fascinating characters.
My contact with Dorothea was through her work as a photographer and stringer for the television stations and daily newspapers in both Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids. When I was called to the scene of a serious traffic accident, fire and natural disaster, Dorothea was always there too.
While I would be groping my way around the accident scene in the dark, usually somewhere along the deadly Red Arrow Highway that snaked north through Van Buren County, and as red emergency lights flashed all around me, she would drive up in her late model white Ford Thunderbird with its red leather seats, open the trunk and pull out a picnic basket full of small box cameras. Dorothea would busily snap pictures of the scene with all of the cameras in her basket, then drive off into the night, personally delivering film to the television stations and newspaper offices that bought them. I don’t believe Dorothea ever did it for the money. She loved the excitement of being where the action was.
After making our police rounds every morning, it was common for Dorothea and me to meet at the Aldo Hotel in downtown South Haven to call our stories in and then share a coffee in the hotel dining area. She ran with the rich and powerful families in the area, so made sure I was quickly introduced to the lawyers, judges, the mayor and anybody else of importance. Dorothea was connected to the people who were making the news.
We still fondly remember the first time Dorothea invited us to her home for dinner. We all dressed for the occasion. The meal, a pork roast boiled with a number of fresh vegetables, was elegantly served by Henry, who dressed in the role of the butler that he was. We had the distinct feeling that we were dining in an old southern mansion with a elegant servant tending to our every need. Dorothea owned a beautiful Saint Bernard dog that was overly friendly and demanded constant attention. I like dogs but that dog seemed far too large to be a house pet and far too large for a small woman like Dorothea to keep. But that was Dorothea. She was a perfect nonconformist and she could afford to be just as eccentric as she wanted to be.
One summer Dorothea hired me to paint her house. I had never painted a house before, but she offered me a thousand dollars and agreed to buy the paint. I always could use the money so took on the job. I had a pickup truck so I bought ladders, paint brushes and all of the equipment I needed and went to work in my spare time.
That was when I realized how large a house she had. It was a massive, two-story home with attached two-car garage. A lattice and rose-covered walkway lead from the garage to a door leading to the house. A large porch was on the front of the house looking out over Lake Michigan. It took me all summer to paint that house but I discovered I really loved the work. Dorothea was usually always gone so I was alone with my thoughts and my portable radio. She wanted the white house repainted white, so I missed the excitement of seeing the place slowly change colors. But when I was finished, I knew I had done a great job. Also, while I was painting her house, the word got around that I was painting Dorothea’s house. My work must have been satisfactory because several of her many friends approached me and asked if I could paint their homes after I finished hers. And bingo; I had a house painting business going on the side.
About once a year all of the news staff in the area got invited to a public relations dinner and news conference sponsored by the local electric company. It always involved a free cocktail hour followed by a great dinner and then a speech by some high company official. We never had to take notes because we were all provided a press packet with a copy of the speech and other information. It usually always involved a report on company profits and plans for new service improvements for the next year. The point was, we just had to show up, have a good time, and turn the material in that packet into a story the next day.
One year the gathering was planned in Dowagiac, in Cass County. All of the media people from South Haven, including Dorothea and I, traveled with the publisher of the South Haven Tribune.
The drinks were flowing heavily that night and Dorothea apparently had one drink too many. I have often wondered if someone didn’t slip her a “Mickey.” In the midst of the speech we were all shocked when her head flopped over. She went into a stupor face down in an unfinished dish of green sherbet. I wasn’t sitting next to her and could do nothing about what had happened. The people around her pretended they did not see anything. When the meeting was over we cleaned her up but were unable to bring her back to full consciousness. We held her up, helped her stumble to the car and then drove her back to South Haven. She snored all of the way. Her Thunderbird was parked in my yard and Dorothea was still in no condition to drive home. So we were faced with the strange problem of somehow getting Dorothea and her car delivered home and tucking her in her bed. We were a bunch of men and nobody really wanted to do it. But we couldn’t just leave her as she was. The decision was made to drive her home and at least put her car in her garage. Fortunately, by the time we got there she was awake enough to go in the house on her own. Out of courtesy no one spoke of it again.
Dorothea traded her Thunderbird in for a new model about every three years. Just before she bought her next car, Doris and I were shopping for a “better” car, and decided to buy a used car from the Ford dealership in South Haven. I hadn’t driven the car more than a few days when it began spewing blue smoke from the exhaust pipe. That was a sure sign that the engine was burning oil mixed with the gasoline. I took the car to a mechanic I trusted. He discovered that the car’s main bearing was damaged and it was going to cost me nearly the cash value of the car to get it replaced. The dealer had poured thick oil into the crankcase to temporarily camouflage the trouble. I took the car back to the dealer and demanded a repair, at his expense. He refused to fix the car, refund my money, or take back the car. I was forced to go to another dealership and purchase another car.
When Dorothea bought her car from the same Ford dealer, she took delivery on the day that she and a friend were leaving for a trip to Florida. They drove the car to the Indiana border before noticing that the oil trouble light clicked on. Dorothea took the car into a Ford dealership and had it checked out. They discovered the car had been delivered with only the grease and oil from the manufacturer in the crankcase. The dealer had failed to put any oil in the engine. It must have been a good engine because it ran for almost a hundred miles on just the natural grease and possibly a quart of oil from the factory before the problem was discovered.
The engine was so damaged by then it was spewing blue smoke from the tail pipe every time she drove it. Dorothea took the car back to the dealership but he refused to replace the engine.
That Ford dealer made a very serious mistake when he clipped the two news reporters in the area he served. We ganged up on the business. We didn’t write stories. We just told people what he did to us where ever we went. It took us very little time to get the word around town. Within a few months the dealership was closed. Dorothea filed a complaint with the Ford Motor Company. They showed up at her door one day with a brand new Thunderbird to replace the damaged one.
I remained at the South Haven bureau for about six years before moving on. Doris and I returned to South Haven two or three times after that. It was hard to say goodbye to old friends like Dorothea Logan.
I looked up her name while preparing this story and found Dorothea’s obituary. She died in 1981 at the age of 81. There was no picture.
It is strange to realize that after all the times Dorothea and I worked side-by-side, taking pictures of fires, car wrecks and other public events, we never thought to turn our cameras on each other. I do not possess a single picture of this woman. I guess we thought our lives would go on forever in those days.