1918
Dale
2010
Dale Baker Doherty
January 26, 1918 — February 13, 2010
Tupelo - Dale Baker Doherty, formerly Margaret Dale Baker, of Tupelo, died early Saturday morning. She was 92.
Memorial services will be 11 a.m., Saturday, February 20, 2010 at All Saints Episcopal Church with The Rev. Paul Stephens officiating. Interment will be in the Verona Cemetery. W. E. Pegues Funeral Directors is in charge of arrangements.
She is survived by her sons George of Merida, Mexico, Nicholas of Ashland, Oregon, and Raymond of New York City, as well as sister Jean Butler of Jackson, daughter-in-law Julianna, grandchildren Liam and Lilla Dale, and close cousins Jack Reed and Frances Joyner of Tupelo. She was the daughter of Lilla Dale Raymond Baker and Word Hooper Baker of Bissell.
Dale graduated from Mississippi State College for Women in 1939, where she studied ballet. In 1937 she and a classmate were featured in National Geographic posed lying among flower blossoms "artfully arranged by their dance teacher in a living mural." The photo was featured again in the "Archives" section of the October 1998 issue. "We were sheltered girls," Dale told the editor. "Although I have to say, I thought it was pretty silly to have us lying on the ground like that."
After graduating she moved to Washington, D.C., where she taught ballet at Arlington Hall and served as a secretary to Senator Harry S. Truman.
She married George P. Doherty in 1942, then serving as an official at the War Production Board. They moved to Buenos Aries where he was responsible for securing strategic war materials in an effort to keep them out of German hands. At the end of the war they moved to New York City where Dale worked for the OSS as part of a secret operation tracking escaping Nazi officials.
In 1946 they moved to Oregon where Dale assisted her husband in an attempt to commercially produce the first frozen vegetables in history. She drove the harvester truck.
After raising her children in Highland Park, Illinois, she lived for many years in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and in 2002 moved back to Tupelo, where she lived with her sister Grace Baker Dirlam, who passed away in 2008.
Her friends and family remember Dale for her charm, beauty, and wit, and for her gracious contentment in her later years. She never ceased ensuring her children got a hot meal by hosting at least one of them every day for lunch or dinner at the Avon Lea retirement community.
As Harry Truman wrote to his wife Bess, "Our girl Dale Baker announced her engagement to the office force this morning and you never heard so much ooh-ing and ah-ing and chattering in your life. She said she was getting the nicest man in the world and I told her that's what she ought to think, but I was of the opinion he'd gotten the best of the bargain."
Expressions of sympathy may be left at www.peguesfuneralhome.com or [email protected]
Memorial services will be 11 a.m., Saturday, February 20, 2010 at All Saints Episcopal Church with The Rev. Paul Stephens officiating. Interment will be in the Verona Cemetery. W. E. Pegues Funeral Directors is in charge of arrangements.
She is survived by her sons George of Merida, Mexico, Nicholas of Ashland, Oregon, and Raymond of New York City, as well as sister Jean Butler of Jackson, daughter-in-law Julianna, grandchildren Liam and Lilla Dale, and close cousins Jack Reed and Frances Joyner of Tupelo. She was the daughter of Lilla Dale Raymond Baker and Word Hooper Baker of Bissell.
Dale graduated from Mississippi State College for Women in 1939, where she studied ballet. In 1937 she and a classmate were featured in National Geographic posed lying among flower blossoms "artfully arranged by their dance teacher in a living mural." The photo was featured again in the "Archives" section of the October 1998 issue. "We were sheltered girls," Dale told the editor. "Although I have to say, I thought it was pretty silly to have us lying on the ground like that."
After graduating she moved to Washington, D.C., where she taught ballet at Arlington Hall and served as a secretary to Senator Harry S. Truman.
She married George P. Doherty in 1942, then serving as an official at the War Production Board. They moved to Buenos Aries where he was responsible for securing strategic war materials in an effort to keep them out of German hands. At the end of the war they moved to New York City where Dale worked for the OSS as part of a secret operation tracking escaping Nazi officials.
In 1946 they moved to Oregon where Dale assisted her husband in an attempt to commercially produce the first frozen vegetables in history. She drove the harvester truck.
After raising her children in Highland Park, Illinois, she lived for many years in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and in 2002 moved back to Tupelo, where she lived with her sister Grace Baker Dirlam, who passed away in 2008.
Her friends and family remember Dale for her charm, beauty, and wit, and for her gracious contentment in her later years. She never ceased ensuring her children got a hot meal by hosting at least one of them every day for lunch or dinner at the Avon Lea retirement community.
As Harry Truman wrote to his wife Bess, "Our girl Dale Baker announced her engagement to the office force this morning and you never heard so much ooh-ing and ah-ing and chattering in your life. She said she was getting the nicest man in the world and I told her that's what she ought to think, but I was of the opinion he'd gotten the best of the bargain."
Expressions of sympathy may be left at www.peguesfuneralhome.com or [email protected]
To order memorial trees or send flowers to the family in memory of Dale Baker Doherty, please visit our flower store.
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