Amateur musician overcame adversity

7/4/2004

PEMBERVILLE, Ohio - Dorothy L. Kirkbride, an avid amateur musician who was a former president of the Crib to College League here, died of cancer Friday in the Hospice of Northwest Ohio. She was 91.

"My mom was part of the greatest generation that made this nation what it is today," son Charles Kirkbride said. "She was very aware of that and she was very proud of that. She lived through the Great Depression, she lived through the great flu epidemic."

Her other son, Jeffrey Kirkbride, said his mother, who took piano, cello, and voice classes for 14 years since she was 12, told him that when she was 9 she wanted a piano so badly that she painted a window pane in her family's house black and white.

"She was a very lovely, compassionate woman," Jeffrey Kirkbride said. "She always wanted to be with children."

Ms. Kirkbride, a Pemberville native born during the great flood of 1913, graduated from Pemberville High School in 1931 and attended Bluffton College for about year as a voice major until her family could no longer afford her college fees due to the Great Depression.

She stayed in Pemberville for five years until 1937, when she moved to Cleveland in search of a job.

She was a receptionist in Cleveland for about 13 years, first for a law firm and then for a construction engineering company. She married Kenneth Kirkbride in Cleveland in about 1949, and two years later the couple moved to Sun Valley, Calif.

After two years as a homemaker there, she moved with the family to Pemberville in 1954. Mr. Kirkbride died in 1983.

In Pemberville, Ms. Kirkbride got involved in the local Crib to College League organization, of which she was the president from about 1958 through 1960.

She devoted most of her time to her children and grandchildren, to whom she has passed her passion for music, Jeffrey Kirkbride said.

In her spare time, Ms. Kirkbride liked cooking for her family and friends and visiting the elderly in nursing homes.

Ms. Kirkbride was a longtime member of Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Pemberville, where she was active in the service society and taught Sunday school.

Surviving are her daughter, Anne Walston; sons, Charles Kirkbride and Jeffrey Kirkbride, and three granddaughters.

Services will be at 11 a.m. Tuesday at Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Pemberville, where visitation will begin at 10 a.m. The body will be at Marsh Funeral Home, Pemberville, after 2 p.m. tomorrow.

The family suggests tributes to Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Lutheran Orient Mission Society, or any children's foundation.