Martha Ann Stevens Dolan was born March 21, 1942, in Appleton, Wisc., nine months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. With her father away in the Army for the first three years of her life, Ann was shaped by the post-war Mid-west American experience.
The curly-blond-haired and blue-eyed toddler grew into a young, poised, and beautiful young woman who graduated from Union College in Barbourville, Kentucky in 1965. She devoted herself to teaching elementary school children in up-state New York for the next two decades. While the children called her “Colonel Klink” behind her back because of her strict “schoolmarm” ways, she was also loved by her students, parents, and colleagues alike. She was renowned for her lively annual third-grade musical productions that involved the entire school community.
An early bleak marriage yielded to a new one with Robert Dolan, the love of her life. Bob was a proud Purple Heart decorated veteran of the Second World War. They were married 43 years until Bob’s death in 2014 in Sebastian.
Ann used to comment that people said it would never last, but their mutual love triumphed over many challenges during those four decades. They were both active in the community, enjoyed entertaining, traveled frequently, and never missed an opportunity to share good times with a wide circle of friends and family.
Ann’s later years saw her increasingly disabled by multiple sclerosis. Bob was a faithful companion and caretaker as his wife illness progressed from a cane, to a walker, and then to a motorized wheelchair. Although physically limited, Ann was determined to enjoy life.
Indeed, her legacy is echoed in the comments of her nurses and aides who reminisced that Ann usually brightened their day instead of the other way around. The death of her beloved Bob slowed her down but did not stop her from living a relatively active life. Unfortunately a cold turned into pneumonia that sapped her strength and allowed the MS to end her life much too quickly and far too prematurely on Feb. 27, 2015, just a few weeks before her 73rd birthday.
Martha Ann Stevens Dolan is survived by a stepmother, Frances Stevens, of Fort Myers, FL, two brothers, Thomas J. Stevens and Robert A. Stevens, of Miami, FL, and a sister, Mary S. Harrah of Clyde, NC, and a large number of nieces and nephews who mourn the loss of this woman who was an inspiration and a role model of courage in the face of adversity to all who knew her. Carpe diem.
The family thanks the loving staff of Silver Bluff Village in Canton, North Carolina, for taking such good care of Ann during what turned out to be the last year of her life.
Donations may be made in her memory to the MS Society, www.nationalmssociety.org/ .
