Harriet Doerr

Doerr, Harriet
Harriet Doerr died on November 24, 2002, at her home in Pasadena, California. She was 92. Born in Pasadena on April 8, 1910, she was the third of six children and two step-children in a family that encouraged curiosity, independent thought and open opinion, that relished controversy and spirited argument, honing the talent for finding the exact word. She attended Polytechnic and Westridge Schools in Pasadena, Smith College, and Stanford University, leaving Stanford in her junior year to marry Albert Edward Doerr. For over 25 years she lived in Pasadena, raising her two children, tending her garden, and volunteering in community service projects. She followed her conscience and acted upon her principles. During World War II, while her husband served in the US Navy, she and her husband signed petitions protesting the relocation of Japanese Americans to internment camps. In the late l950's, family business took her to Mexico. She and her husband settled in a remote village in the state of Aguascalientes to restore to activity a small copper mine that had been shut down by Albert Doerr's father during the Revolution of 1910. There she spent most of the years between 1960 and 1972, when her husband died. When, following the death of her husband, she was challenged by her son, she returned to college, first to Scripps, and then to Stanford. She received her BA from Stanford in 1977, and then continued in the Creative Writing Program (1978-1984) where she was named a Stegner Fellow (1980-1981). Her first book, Stones for Ibarra, appeared in 1984, received the American Book Award for First Work of Fiction in 1984, and was translated into ten languages to be published in twelve countries abroad. Her second novel, Consider This, Senora, was published in 1994; Tiger in the Grass, a collection of essays, followed in 1995. She also wrote a number of short stories. Critics described her writing as "lovely and as pure as clear water, and as rare," "spare and graceful," "lapidary." She received the following awards and honors from : the Transatlantic Review-Henfield Foundation Award (1982), the National Endowment for the Arts (1983), the PEN Award for Fiction (Los Angeles Center, 1985), the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award for quality of prose style (1985). Asked what was the worst possible sin, she alternately named deliberate cruelty to another being and the failure to use one's talent. She believed that education could restore tolerance and sanity to the world. She despised euphemism, pretension, phoniness, and hypocrisy. She most valued kindness, curiosity, a sense of humor and the ridiculous, provocative ideas, and beautiful language. In an interview for the Los Angeles Times, she said, "I do believe that, during your life, everything you do, and everyone you meet, rubs off in some way. Some bit of everything that you experience stays with everyone you've ever known, and nothing is lost. That's what's eternal, these little specks of experience in a great, enormous river than has no end." Or, as she wrote of one of her characters, she believed that "the tree still held all the birds that ever sang there." Harriet Doerr's son Michael died in 1995. She is survived by her daughter Martha Doerr Toppin of Oakland, California. In accordance with her instructions, there will be no funeral or memorial service. Charitable contributions in her memory may be made to: La Escuela Primaria "Leona Vicario" T.V., in Asientos, Ags. Mexico ( address: c/o P. C. Jordan, Rio Nazas 118, Colonia Cuauhtemoc, 06500 Mexico D.F.) the Old Mill Foundation (address: El Molino Viejo. 1120 Old Mill Road, San Marino, CA 91108); the Los Angeles Philharmonic (address: 135 North Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA or to the charity of the donor's choice.