Waltee Sullivan Douglas

Waltee Douglas, Ph.D., D.Min. passed away quietly on January 13, 2026. She was born April 30, 1931 in Sunflower County, MS. She moved to Marion, OH, with her uncle when she was in the ninth grade, and skipped around various cities with various relatives until she graduated high school in 1946. She finally came to Chicago after high school and married Ernest Douglas, Sr. They had four children. She had been working for the Department of Agriculture and had gone as far as she could without a college education. She started school at Roosevelt University in Chicago and earned her bachelor and master's degree in elementary education. She became a teacher in Gary in 1963.

Waltee was in the Gary schools for thirteen years before she went to Purdue-Calumet. Between Gary and Purdue, she went to Purdue-Lafayette for two years and finished work on her Ph.D. in Psychology. She came back to Gary and worked there for a year and a half before going to the Hammond School Corporation for a short while where she served as the affirmative-action officer. Then she went to Purdue Calumet where she had already been an adjunct professor since 1974. She was full-time at Purdue from 1977 to 1997 as the director of the counseling center and staff psychologist. She also taught counseling classes. In addition, she led workshops and seminars that were designed to enhance human growth and development. She did a lot of classes to assist students in completing their work at Purdue. In addition to this she got a master's and doctorate degrees in ministry from the Chicago Theological Seminary.

After retiring from Purdue, she worked at the First Baptist Church as the Associate Pastor and as Director of the Corinthian Christian Center. The Corinthian Christian Center was a treatment facility for elderly women. The Center helped them manage their medications.

Waltee was also an ordained pastor. She ran an employment enhancement program at First Baptist in Gary. She provided the counseling necessary for young people to find employment. Since many of the unemployed have substance problems the Center attempted to develop a program for them in addition to helping them find employment. The goal was to get them to the point where they could find a job and keep it.

One of Waltee's primary reasons for going to seminary was to be able to combine the secular and religious academic backgrounds. Although people are spiritual beings, she could deal with them at the psychological level without bringing religion into the treatment plan. However, if they opened the door to their spiritual side, then she would go into that spiritual arena-when invited. Her perspective was a holistic approach: mind, body, and spirit. When at her church, there was no problem with integrating the psychological with the theological.

Waltee traveled a lot. She went with a group from Purdue Calumet to England and France. She went with her daughter Shirley (d. 2022) and twenty of her friends to Seoul, South Korea for a shopping tour and finished up in Hong Kong. She has also gone to the Holy Land twice. While on both tours, she baptized a number of people in the Jordan River.

Being a Baptist and an ordained woman was very difficult. At that time, the Baptist church didn't ordain women. So, she went to the Methodist church and was appointed to a church in Elkhart, IN, for two-and-a-half years. While she was in Elkhart, she had the opportunity to go to South Africa twice. Whenever someone said, "Let's go," she tried to find the money necessary for the trip.

Waltee had four children with her husband Ernest who preceded her in death - two daughters Gwenetta Hill Douglas and Shirley, who preceded her in death, and two sons, Lawrence and Ernest; one grandson, Daud (David) J. Hill and three great grandchildren, Nikiyah Hill, Tiyan Lewis and Dailan Andrews-Hill (d. 2023).

If Waltee could write her epitaph, it would be: "If I can help someone, then my life had a purpose." It gave her a great deal of satisfaction when she saw people that she had helped or taught when they were young doing well in life. Because of this, she felt that her life hadn't been in vain.

Her mother died in a nursing home with Alzheimer's Disease after a dozen years. Her commitment to helping others was dedicated to her mother. She stated. "If I can help someone stay with their family longer, then it makes me feel good inside. I have dedicated my life to my mother."

Services will be at First Baptist Church, 626 W. 21st Ave., Gary, IN., Saturday, January 31st, 2026. Visitation is from 9am to 11am. Family hour is from 10am to 11am. The homegoing celebration will begin at 11am.