Grandma Dedafoe's Scrapbook
Dorothy DART, local doctor
By Jennifer Elizabeth Frank
Lansing State Journal
Dr. Dorothy Dart of Mason, the personal physician for the R.E. Olds family, died
Thursday. She was 84.
Dart graduated from Mason High School and studied at the University of Michigan
and Michigan State University before earning her degree at Women's Medical College of
Pennsylvania.
She completed her residency at Franklin Hospital of San Francisco then practiced
for nearly two years in Mill Valley across the bay.
Dart set up a family practice in Mason and Lansing in 1941 and eventually became
the personal physician for the R.E. Olds family.
In the 1950s, Dart completed a psychiatric residency at the Ypsilanti State
Hospital and opened a psychiatric practice in North Muskegon. She retired in 1967 and moved back
to the Mason area.
Dr. Donald Cairns of Mason said Dart was well ahead of her time when she started
her medical career in the 1940s. She became well-known in Lansing, when male doctors were called
away during World War II, he said.
"She was a very, very intelligent, lovely person. We had a mutual admiration
society, she and I. She was very kind in every way that I can think of," Cairns said.
:"She was a member of the Dart family, so great things were expected of her," he
said. He was referring to her Mason family which has been involved in banking and insurance in
the Lansing area for many years and owns the Dart Container Corp.
Cairns said Dart already had retired when he met her, so they never were
contemporaries.
Surviving are her sister, Gertrude DART SMITH, and a number of nieces and nephews.
A memorial service will be at 3 p.m. Monday at First Presbyterian Church of Mason.
Back to Obituary Index A thru I