Individual Details

Marriage

On Tuesday, December 9, 2003, DORTHA REA FURR of Silver Spring, MD, wife of Ferrell W. Furr. Also survived by two children, Susan Furr Gellert and husband, Charles, of Washington, DC and Ferrell Windsor Furr and wife, Susan of Laurel, MD; grandchildren, Jesse and Chana Gellert; sisters, Ira Belle Bowers, Imogene Cagle and Nadine McElhinney. Friends may visit with the family on Monday, December 15, 2003 from 6 p.m. until 8 p.m. at THE MURIEL H. BARBER FUNERAL HOME, 21525 Laytonsville Rd.,(MD Rt 108), Laytonsville, MD. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Ashton United Methodist Church, PO Box 160, Ashton, MD 20860. Notice of Memorial Service later.
This ad appeared in The Washington Post from 12/11/2003 - 12/13/2003.

Death

On Tuesday, December 9, 2003, DORTHA REA FURR of Silver Spring, MD, wife of Ferrell W. Furr. Also survived by two children, Susan Furr Gellert and husband, Charles, of Washington, DC and Ferrell Windsor Furr and wife, Susan of Laurel, MD; grandchildren, Jesse and Chana Gellert; sisters, Ira Belle Bowers, Imogene Cagle and Nadine McElhinney. Friends may visit with the family on Monday, December 15, 2003 from 6 p.m. until 8 p.m. at THE MURIEL H. BARBER FUNERAL HOME, 21525 Laytonsville Rd.,(MD Rt 108), Laytonsville, MD. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Ashton United Methodist Church, PO Box 160, Ashton, MD 20860. Notice of Memorial Service later.

For One Woman, Two Hearts And Several Fruitful Careers

By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 4, 2004; Page C10


She came to Washington as a "government girl," one of the legions of independent young women who moved here to work at civil service jobs at the start of World War II. She came from the former "Mule Capital of the World," and her work took her to New York's fashion districts. She helped build two houses, start an orchard and operate a business.

Dortha Rea "Dottie" Windsor Furr found herself in many worlds during her lifetime.

Born in Lathrop, Mo., where 170,00 mules started their journey to the Boer War, she figured out early how to get where she wanted to go. According to family stories, the teenager applied for an evening job as a soda jerk, and the drugstore owner wanted to know how she would get from the family farm into town. "Well, that's my problem," she said. She solved it by hitching a ride with the family's hired hand at the end of his workday, and she walked home at night.

When World War II broke out, she made her way to Washington, where she went to work for the Department of the Army, analyzing before-and-after reconnaissance photographs of bombing runs.

She met her husband, Ferrell W. Furr, at a USO dance, and after six months of dating, they married in May 1946. They lived across from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in an old barracks at 7427 Georgia Ave. NW.

Mrs. Furr worked briefly for the Veterans Administration after the war, then had two children. The Furrs bought land in Ednor, in rural Montgomery County, and, with the help of his brother, a bricklayer, built a house themselves of scavenged concrete blocks. A few years later, they bought 31/2 acres in Ashton and again built themselves a house. Mrs. Furr later built the brick patio.

In 1955, she got into sales at the big downtown Hecht's store, and worked her way up to buyer for the teen and preteen clothing departments.

"She called that her college education," said her daughter, Susan Gellert of Washington.

She was so good that headhunters in New York City sent her letters imploring her to contact them the next time she was in Manhattan, said Gellert, who discovered the letters in her mother's papers. Furr's purchasing trips took her from the East Coast to Los Angeles.

She was able to manage that career and her two small children with the help of her parents, who moved from Missouri and shared the family's home.

Her father, who had been a farmer in Missouri, planted 100 peach trees as well as apple and cherry trees at the home in Ashton. Residents of the Olney-Sandy Spring area may recall the family's roadside fruit stand, which stood for years across from Sherwood High School. People began calling her Peaches, based on a sign that was intended to be informative and instructional but turned descriptive: "Peaches Drive In."

"We ate great," said her son, Ferrell Windsor Furr, who lives in Laurel.

She gave up the Hecht's job after 10 years to help her husband run his electrical contracting business from their home. The business closed in 1982, after he was injured in a construction accident. Her parents returned to Missouri, where two of their three other daughters live, and life began to settle into a retirement rhythm. The children were grown and gone, and the couple moved to Leisure World in Silver Spring.

But when she was 60, in 1987, worsening health took her to a doctor, who said she needed a new heart. At the time, hospitals were reluctant to operate on people of that age, and several turned her down because of it. But she was accepted by the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, based largely on her otherwise good physical condition. She became the hospital's 135th heart transplant patient and had the operation on her wedding anniversary.

"When she hit the anniversary of her new heart, the congregation would sing 'Happy Birthday' to her, as a celebration of her new life," said the Rev. Jeff Jones, pastor of Ashton United Methodist Church. "She was one of those charming and loving, compassionate people, very supportive and encouraging of others. . . . She wanted others to receive a second chance like she did."

The children of the church knew her as the lady with candy in her pockets, and she raised funds for church-sponsored scholarships. She also was a volunteer at the strawberry festival for the Sandy Hill Museum. She quilted and took up china painting in her later years, producing a prodigious number of hand-painted plates, saucers and pitchers, and a communion plate the size of a computer keyboard for her church.

Just before Thanksgiving, Mrs. Furr took a drive with her daughter into downtown Washington, which she hadn't visited in more than 20 years. They stopped at Hecht's and drove by the old building on Seventh Street NW where she had worked, and were cheered by signs that businesses were returning. She fell ill the day after Thanksgiving and was hospitalized Dec. 1. Her replacement heart was still going strong, but she died Dec. 9 at Montgomery General Hospital in Olney of pneumonia and sepsis.

"She considered every day of that extra 16 years a miracle," her daughter said.