Woman owned resort motel with husband

2/13/2006

OTTOVILLE, Ohio - Doris A. Rellinger, 72, who with her husband operated a farm supply shop in Putnam County and a motel on Devils Lake near Adrian, died Thursday in St. Rita's Medical Center, Lima, Ohio.

She suffered from complications - probably a blood clot - after double knee surgery.

Mrs. Rellinger's primary job for years was raising her seven children who were born over 12 years. But she also helped her husband, Arthur, with the accounting of their Ottoville Farm Center, which sold seed, fertilizer, and pesticides to farmers for use on 30,000 to 40,000 acres in Putnam County.

The Rellingers also raised corn, soybeans, wheat, tomatoes, sugarbeets, chickens, and cattle for decades on the farm where Arthur grew up and where their agricultural supply business started.

In the late 1970s, the Rellingers sold the supply business and moved to Devils Lake, where they operated the Clearwater Resort Motel from about 1977 to 1997.

They found remarkable the difference between selling fertilizer - a commodity in a competitive field - and renting the motel's eight efficiency apartments and six overnight rooms at the lake to vacationing families, their son, Howard, said.

Mrs. Rellinger grew up in Ottoville, the youngest of 10 children of Bernard and Bernadine Rayman, who owned a tavern there. She graduated from Ottoville High School in 1951, clerked at a store in the village, and married her husband the following June.

She was active in Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Ottoville.

Surviving are her husband, Arthur; sons, David, Howard, and Douglas; daughters, Karla Sanderson; Marlene Chapin, Tina Koester; and Toni Jill Rieger; sisters, Alma Gerker and Mildred Brinkman; 24 grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

Services will be at 10:30 this morning in Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, Ottoville. Harter & Schier Funeral Home, Delphos, is handling arrangements. The family suggests tributes to a charity of the donor's choice.