Dorothy Rushworth Brown

It was said of Dorothy that she was a person who was as beautiful inside as outside. She never voiced a malicious or mean spirited thing about others. Her formative years took place in Portland, Oregon, but she and her siblings stayed close to her aunts Marinda's and "Gussie's" families when the Lyons returned to St. Paul on vacations.

When young, her passion was ballet and she was offered the opportunity to study in N.Y. at the Stefano Mascagno School of Dancing. She returned to Portland in 1922 to start her own dance class studio at the Laurelhurst Club. Some years later and after attending classes in Hollywood at the Ernest Belcher School of Dance, she cofounded the Dorothy/Claire School of Dance for married & working women in the Spanish Room of the Multnomah Hotel, with Mrs. Lillian Claire Stevens MacGregor in 1928.

The brother of one of her dance students, Blaine R. Smith, Jr., scion of the family that founded the Western Clay Mfg. Company of Portland, Oregon, met her at the Laurelhurst Club & they were married 3/14/1923 in the Westminster Presbyterian Church with a reception to follow for 150 guests in her parent's home. From this union came her daughter, Marilyn. The marriage was ruptured by October 1927 and she married secondly Joe Brown on 1/1/1929 at her parent's home. From this marriage was born her son, Norman.

Joe's growing northwest business precipitated the family to move from Portland to Seattle to Hillsboro, CA and back north to Washington Park, Seattle, WA. As a consumate wife & cook she provided her husband, Joe, and the two children with the personal care and attention that the family of a self-made entrepreneur needed in his busy growing business and social life. In addition to Joe's northwest liquor control state beverage brokerage business he owned a guest ranch in Montana, the "Flying Cloud Ranch". In the summers Dorothy saw to it that the guests were well provided for with comfortable accommodations and delicious meals. As hostess she accepted these duties with great grace and style up until the time that pancreatic cancer took her life.