Dodie then and now

Vivacious, fun-loving, always on the go, Dorothy spent her late teens and twenties working, living at home, and stepping out with pals.

Sometime in the late 1930s, someone fixed her up with a real character: Ed Gravett. Also a Dayton native, Ed was the second son of Dr. Robert Gravett, DO, and his second wife, Maud Stanley Patty.

Doc as his dad was called, was one of the early osteopaths in Dayton; his brother, Hugh Gravett, also was a DO but lived and worked in Piqua, Ohio, about 30 miles away. Doc had a good reputation as a practitioner and helped start the first osteopathic hospital in the city. At one time, he assisted the psychic healer Edgar Cayce (The Sleeping Prophet) by administering the treatments Cayce would recount while in a trance.

Ed, whose nickname was Puffy because he resembled a celebrity of the time with that name, was a romantic and talented man who dreamed of a career in journalism. For a time, he had worked for the Dayton papers. He carried his Argus camera around and took artful shots of still lifes, people, and especially Dorothy Pickrel.

They were friends first, of course, and then things got romantic until Ed proposed and Dodie accepted. Above his her formal wedding portrait. The willowy figure is mature but compare that lovely face with the 7-year old a few posts back and you see that her expression had remained pretty much the same over all those years.

They were married on Oct. 20, 1940. It was a quiet wedding but did get some press because of the families' social standing. Ed, born Oct. 25, 1912, was 28 and had gone into sales, working for pharmaceutical companies; Dodie was 25. After their wedding, they moved to Syracuse, N.Y., where Dodie took on her new housewife role and Ed went on the road with his samples.

Now, flash forward, oh, about 70 years:

Dodie is now pretty much bed-bound, unable to walk or navigate on her own, and mentally very weak. Her personality is still apparent in flashes -- the big toothy smile, and welcoming words -- but you don't want to listen to carefully because her talk is full of non sequiturs.

She is reasonably comfortable with the fact that she's at the end of her life. "I pray I'll die in my sleep," she told me a few weeks ago.

But the drop-off in her abilities has been steep.

Three weeks ago, she was still navigating her apartment and Oakleaf Village, with or without her walker. She still worked the big main living room and teased Jan and Bethany at the front desk. She was still highly resistant to her devoted caregivers -- Becky, Shirley, and other nurses. She still got herself down to the inhouse salon for hair care.

Our theory is that coming to Ebeid has been a big relief for Dorothy. She can finally quit striving and trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the staff and residents by seeming to be more aware than she actually was. She's been able to drop that veneer of independence and relax into the excellent care she receives at this lovely residence.

She's already won the hearts of caregivers there, especially Holly, the aide who I believe actually runs the entire Ebeid Center. Holly is really the go-to person there.

The very top picture is one of the most recent shots of Mom, taken last November at Ted's 60th birthday party in Oakleaf.