Throughout his childhood, Pat Rall remembers taking more
than one snowball to the shoulder from his dear old mom.
"She was the type of mom who would get into a snowball
fight with you," Pat said about his mother, Dorothy
Rall. "She was vivacious. She went 200 miles an hour.
No one could keep up with her."
Dorothy, known around Third Phillips as "Dottie,"
did slow down, as she has called the ward home for "four
or five years." But Pat, the only one of four siblings
who lives in the area, still remembers life with Dottie
as a frenzy of activity, a time when Mom was someone you
could count on.
Dorothy Rall was born in Coffeyville, Kan., where she was
raised on a dairy farm. After attending college, she married
a Marine who had just served in World War II. She had three
children and lived in Grand Island and Lincoln most of her
life. While she was a "housewife" in title, Dottie
was the kind of woman who never sat still, Pat said. He
remembers, in particular, mealtime both for what Dottie
put on the table and how she enjoyed it.
"She could eat with both hands," Pat said. "She
had some kind of metabolism. She would eat and never gain
a pound." Her children and their activities were enough
to keep the zippy Dottie on her feet, and Pat said she attended
all his sporting events and those of his siblings.
She was also the type of mother who didn't allow certain
things in the house, such as profanity. Pat said he remembered
one uncle who often swore but curbed his behavior around
Dottie. When the Vietnam War came around, Dorothy began
working at the Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant, something
she enjoyed, Pat said. It seemed that, the older her children
got, the more their mother got involved with different activities
and work. One of her favorite volunteer activities, he said,
was their local church, where she often picked up a mop
in the name of the Lord.
"She always volunteered at church, and when she was
done, she went in and cleaned," Pat said. "That
was a big part of her life."
Dottie's decline started a few years ago when she admitted
to loved ones that she was forgetting things, and when she
came to visit her children, she might get lost for long
periods of time. Pat's grandmother had died of Alzheimer's
disease, and Pat said it was something his mother was very
open about as it happened. This year, all Dottie's children
and their families were able to come up and see her, which
Pat was happy to see.
"It was a good thing," he said. "We all
got to say goodbye."
When Dean Gracy would enter a room and forget why or suddenly lose a name he had known for years, he would joke with his adopted daughter, Jill Strong, about her insulation from the horrors of Alzheimer's disease... Read more...
Pat Rall remembers his mother as "Supermom," always moving,
working and playing with her children. When she developed Alzheimer's
disease, all that changed.