Blanche Elizabeth (Robbins) Dickover (1918 - 2015)

Born 12 Oct 1918 in Dorchester, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States

Wife of Jean Goldman Dickover — married [date unknown] in California, United States

Died 17 Apr 2015 at age 96 in Canyonville, Douglas, Oregon, United States

Biography

Blanche was born in 1918. She passed away in 2015.

Obituary

My wonderful mom, Blanche (Bette) Robbins Dickover passed into the loving arms of God on Friday, April 17, 2015. Mom had a heart attack a few days before and I was able to be by her side until she passed. She was born on October 12, 1918, in Dorchester, Massachusetts, to Walter Reid and Julia Belle (Cutler) Robbins. She lived in the New England area for most of her growing up years. When she was in her teens, the family moved to Garden Grove, CA, where she finished High School and earned a BA in nursing from Los Angeles County Hospital. She met and married my dad, Jean Goldman Dickover, while she was in residency. They had two boys while still in CA, Fred Robbin (deceased) and Walter Reid (Roseburg). They moved to Oregon in the early 40s, to “live the dream”. I (Maryjean) came along in 1952, the only “real Oregonian”. Mom worked at the old Mercy Hospital and retired from Douglas Community Hospital. She went through life quietly, preferring to be in the background. She had the greenest thumb ever, and used it liberally with her flowers and magnificent gardens, never passing up a garden center or the opportunity to snip off a small start of a plant she found growing in somebody’s yard. She loved to travel and enjoyed a month long trip to New England with my dad, as well as trips to Indiana, Florida, and Montana. She and I have wild tales to tell about our little jaunts… the rules were: never pass a garden center, garage sale or place to eat along the water! She was also a prolific writer, coached by Bill Duncan. She was published in several anthologies and in the Senior Times (News-Review). She wrote about her childhood in New England so descriptively that the last time we went back; I recognized places and buildings just from reading those stories. She loved animals, was an avid bird feeder and watcher, including all the pet chickens and our Cockatoo and African Gray. She had a lot of laughs over the things those birds said! Genealogy overtook her when I was in the eighth grade and had to write a paper on my family. She was determined to trace us, both sides of the family, back to the beginning of time, and she did manage to get us back to England. Stained glass, oil painting, a little quilting and sewing, cooking, canning… she just seemed to be interested in everything and could do anything. She was a crack shot with a rifle or a pistol. We moved to Canyonville about 15 years ago, and lived together till a year ago when she moved to an assisted living center here. She had taken a couple bad falls lately, the last one about a month ago, breaking her pelvis and wrist. I was able to go feed her lunch and dinner every day for that last month. I’m so grateful for all the things she taught me and passed on to me. She’ll be with me with every seed I put in the ground, every fall when I’m canning, whenever I take a sudden detour because I saw a little, tiny garage sale sign. She didn’t want any services, so she’s been buried in our family plot in Tenmile, next to her parents and my brother Fred. If you want to do something in her memory, a donation to the Tenmile Cemetery would be appropriate. She put a lot of time and effort into getting the cemetery mapped and organized, and it remained important to her.

Burial

Tenmile Cemetery, Tenmile, Douglas County, Oregon, USA

Sources

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/9670884/blanche-elizabeth-dickover