Doris Irene Schwaderer

1927 - 2024

Doris Irene (Drake) Schwaderer
Big Rapids, MI
December 3, 1927 - September 14, 2024
1927 was the year of Charles Lindbergh's first solo, non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, the first commercial trans-Atlantic telephone line, the first long distance television image transmission, the last Ford Model T, the First Ford Model A, and the birth of Doris Irene Drake on December 3, 1927 at home on a farm outside of Caro, Michigan. Her parents were Olive Emma (Milner) Drake and Laurence Jennings Drake. Her father was killed by an inter-urban train in 1929. When she was five, her mother married Arthur C. Aiken, the man she always knew as Dad.
Doris grew up at a time when many farms did not have electricity or indoor plumbing. She learned to cook on a wood-burning stove, and the family farmed with horses. Doris graduated from Caro High School in 1945. She worked as a nurse's aide at Caro Community Hospital before attending nurses training at Saginaw General Hospital, which included rotations at the Mental Hospital in Ypsilanti and Detroit Children's Hospital. She became a Registered Nurse in the spring of 1949, and was head nurse for the 3:00 - 11:00 shift on the first floor of Saginaw General Hospital.
In November of 1949 her fiancé, Robert William Schwaderer, called from Michigan College of Mining and Technology, where he was studying engineering. He said that he had gotten a deer, they would have meat for the winter, and could get married at Christmas time. They were married on December 17. Doris joined Bob in Houghton. She worked a short time as an RN at the hospital in Laurium and The Houghton County TB Sanitorium. Primarily, she worked at the Houghton County Farm/Nursing Home for mostly indigent residents. Following Bob's graduation, they lived in Saginaw, Traverse City, Bay City, and Jackson. They had three children in those years: Susan, James, and Barbara.
The family moved to Big Rapids in 1960. While Doris's main occupation was as a homemaker, she didn't give up nursing. She occasionally worked at the hospital, was the nurse for out-patient orthopedic and urology clinics, and helped at Red Cross Blood Banks. Doris strongly believed in family planning and every child's right to be wanted. She spent many years working at Planned Parenthood Clinics making sure young women in town and the college had knowledge of and access to contraception and reproductive health care.
Doris and Bob fostered a love of the outdoors and travel in their children. There were many happy times swimming, hunting, fishing, watching wildlife, exploring, driving, snowmobiling, or cross-country skiing on the trails at "the cabin" in the woods west of Big Rapids. They later built a house in the woods, where they both lived until Bob's death in 1992. Doris continued to live there and shared her home with her younger sister, Ruth. In 2011 she moved to Perry Farms Village in Harbor Springs near her daughter, Susan. She returned to Big Rapids in 2021 and lived at The Brook until her death.
Doris was the last of The Coffee Ladies, a group of close friends that met for coffee nearly every week for decades. Originally, they met in homes with their small children playing nearby. In later years they met at area restaurants and always welcomed visiting children and grandchildren. Their Christmas time Cookie Party was a great hit to their children when they were young. It evolved to a Cookie-less Cookie Party as the ladies aged.
Doris and Bob were very supportive of their children and grandchildren through the years. They were always there to help in times of need: floods, surgeries, illnesses, miscarriages, births, new houses/businesses, marriages, and divorces. Doris was both Nana and Grandma to her grandkids and then Dodo to her great grandkids. Her love and playfulness built unbreakable bonds.
She was pre-deceased by her parents and husband; sisters, Laura Jean Drake Livingston (Lewis Livingston) and Ruth Elaine Aiken; step siblings, Ila Aiken Gross, Evert Aiken (Julia); and her nephews: Dale and Gaylin Livingston.
Though Doris often said everyone was gone, she is survived by her three children: Susan Beth Schwaderer (Bob Lawrence), James Robert Schwaderer (Mary) and Barbara Anne Schwaderer (Craig McGirr); three grandchildren: Kira Louise McGirr (Charles McGuire), Frederick (Fritz) Charles McGirr (Amanda Pickett), and James Blaine Schwaderer (Brooke Batterson); two great-grandchildren: Elliot Drake McGuire and Theodore Hagle McGuire and several nieces and nephews.
Doris continued her dedication to medicine and science by donating her body to medical research through MedCure. When her ashes are returned they will be scattered in the forest that she so loved to join those of her husband, Bob, and younger sister, Ruth. Memorial donations may be made to Planned Parenthood of Michigan or to Michigan Technological University.
There will be a Celebration of Life at 2:00 pm on Wednesday, October 16 at the Tulleymore Golf Club, 11969 Tulleymore Drive, Stanwood, MI. Friends are all welcome.