Doris Rose DeLashmutt peacefully “called it curtains” on Friday, May 20, 2022 with friends and family surrounding her.

Her parents, Filomena and Michele Romanini, immigrated from Antraccoli, Italy in 1921 and made their home in Orick. She was born on Monday, August 10, 1931 in a house that once stood directly on the current Orick Fairgrounds. The Romanini brood consisted of six children and she was the prized baby of the family. Doris was proud to be from Orick and every chance she got, she’d tell you a story from her charmed childhood. Some of her favorites include the time a bunch of young Orickians took a makeshift raft out on Freshwater Lagoon, not one of them could swim and she marveled that they all survived the adventure. The one and only time she was kicked off a school bus by the driver, was for talking; interestingly the school bus driver happened to be her older brother, Leo. She was left on the side of the road, hitchhiked and got a ride from a logging truck.

Doris loved her siblings and always said she never would have learned to ride a bike if it wasn’t for her sister Norma’s paper route. She had a couple of favorite childhood jobs, one was as the usherette and soda jerk for the first and only movie theater in Orick and the other was working for the Webster household, Orick’s unofficial finishing school, where she proudly learned to set a table. Doris wasn’t a smoker and it wasn’t because she hadn’t given it a try; she said she snuck a few when she was little but “it never stuck.”

She graduated from Arcata High in 1949 and was a jock before it was fashionable. Of note she was the president of the Girls’ League and helped with the annual Hi-Jinx (let your imagination figure that one out).

Doris graduated from Humboldt State College with a teaching credential in the days when female teachers would get fired if they went to a bar and certainly couldn’t be pregnant and keep their jobs. She began her teaching career at her alma mater in 1954, becoming Orick’s first P. E. Coach. She finished her career at Pacific Union in Arcata. Mom was a favorite for many students and to this day former 2nd graders stop to say hello.

She met her husband, Wade J. DeLashmutt in Orick at a dance, got married on July 3, 1955 in Orick and the rest is history. They had three children.

In 1972, she was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis and her life dramatically changed. From that point on, she never worked outside of home. There are very few times her children can remember her complaining of the pain. She was the carpool queen before “carpooling” was a thing. She babysat countless kids that were sick when their parents couldn’t stay home to take care of them. She was known for helping out her elderly friends, sometimes driving them to the grocery store or taking them to doctor’s appointments. She also had a way with rascally youth, one such rascal still affectionately refers to her as “Mahzie”. If you stopped by the DeLashmutt house on any given day, there would be a wheel of dry jack cheese sitting out waiting to be grated. Doris was the poster child for Ma Bell. She was on the phone non-stop calling old and new friends alike every day and her family would joke that if the phone didn’t ring for five minutes, it must have been off the hook. One of her nieces was impressed with her open mindedness around religion and politics.

She came to life when her older sisters, Rita and Norma, stopped by to visit. They would sit around the table into the wee hours and the conversation was exclusively in Italian, the language that tied them to their Italian roots. To this day the smell of chopped parsley, onions and celery will transport her children to a moment in time when Zia Bruna and Zio Picchi would come to the house for an allday production that ended in enough spaghetti sauce to feed an army.

In her final days, she said she thought she’d have more time on this planet. Well, for a 90 year-old who spent her whole life in beautiful Humboldt County, she lived a good, full life; may we all be so lucky.

She is preceded in death by her parents, Filomena and Michele Romanini; siblings, Robert (Uncle Pete), Rita, Joe, Leo, and Norma.

She is survived by daughter, Lori Vogt and son-in-law, Randy Vogt; son, Wade DeLashmutt Jr. and daughter-in-law, Sabrina DeLashmutt; daughter, Dina Macdonald and son-in-law, Roger Macdonald and granddaughters Patricia and Sabrina Macdonald.

The family would like to thank Hospice of Humboldt and the Threshold Singers.

On Saturday, June 4, 2022 Doris will have her official send off at St. Mary’s Church in Arcata with a Rosary at 9:30 a.m. and Funeral at 10 a.m. Reception immediately to follow at the Portuguese Hall in Arcata. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to Hospice, Betty Chinn, Food for People or your favorite charity.

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