Jay Samuel Doolittle

Jay Samuel Doolittle, 93, of Knoxville, Tennessee, saw his final curtain call on October 12, 2024, in Knoxville, Tennessee. Jay had a long and colorful life. He was born in Hobart, Indiana on July 21, 1931 during the Great Depression Era to Wade and Mable Doolittle. He had four older sisters and a younger brother. His main passions in life were the military, theater, and Cubs baseball.
Jay's love for theater was sparked early on by his older sister Betty. She was very artistic and wrote little skits for her siblings, and they enacted them in the one car garage with the door open. He really loved those times and he also loved the annual Christmas plays at school.
His love for Cubs baseball began when his mother took him to his first game at Wrigley Field with his sister Joyce. They would ride up on the train from Hobart with a picnic lunch. His dad also took them on occasion, but his dad favored the White Sox, and drove them up in the car.
When Jay was eight, the family left Hobart to move to an 80-acre farm in Lowell, Indiana. They had no power or water to the home, and used an outhouse. They had farm animals, hundreds of chickens and grew corn, wheat, oats, hay, and soybeans. Jay was the first boy, and Wade instructed him all about farming because Wade worked full time in the steel mill while running the farm. When Jay was 15, he left home to live at a dairy farm for room/board and $20 a week.
At age 16 Jay left home with his friend hoping to work at an orange grove in Florida. It did not work out, so out of money and hungry, the two boys enlisted in the Air Force out of desperation. After basic training, Jay studied Radio Technology and Morse Code. His first deployment as an airman was overseas to Japan during the Korean conflict, and this experience fueled his desire for adventure and heroism that led to his long service career. Jay excelled in morse-code radio-operations on missions which led him to travel the globe many times over, including Korea, Europe, southeast Asia, Viet Nam, and Greenland. His aptitude for language helped him to pick up conversational bits of foreign language that he brought home to share with the family.
Jay married Virginia Lowhorn on October 9, 1952, and they raised three children, Jan, Douglas, and Lani as they traveled with his Air Force assignments from Indiana to Hawaii, to Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, and Germany. During his time off Jay began acting in more stage plays at each new location. He also loved electronics and music and collected over 1800 vinyl records of Jazz/swing, musicals, and classical music. One of his favorite spots on the planet are the Cook Islands in the South Pacific. He deployed on occasion to an atoll called Tongareva, of 200 people. He loved it so much he even tried to buy one of the nearby islands, but the timing and paperwork was very difficult, so he gave it up.
Jay retired from the Air Force at age 42. A couple of years later he and Virginia divorced and he enrolled at Stephens College in Missouri. At college, Jay broke a record for the most stage performances completed there, 162. He graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. This hardworking trait was common in the Doolittle family, especially his grandfather, father, and uncle and this passed along to him, and to his children as well. Jay's hero was his distant relative, General Jimmy Doolittle. He even met Jimmy's son, John Doolittle once when Jay was stationed in Japan. After a move to Tampa, Florida, Jay married his second wife Susan Lynn. Susan passed away in 1993.
He later moved to Knoxville, Tennessee and was cast in plays at the Clarence Brown Theatre and elsewhere. In the production "An Indian Named Sam" a young lady named Whitney Bryan was in the cast who often spoke with Jay about acting skills. She introduced Jay to her mother Donna Vandergriff Bryan and the romance was launched. Months later, Jay brought Donna onto the stage after a performance and proposed to her in front of the audience to hearty applause when she answered yes. They were married on June 26, 1998. Jay continued to pursue his passion of acting, and enjoyed hundreds of acting roles up until a month before his death when he was filmed riding in a 2-seat biplane vintage aircraft for a television commercial.
In addition to his parents, Jay was preceded in death by his son Jay Doolittle Jr.; wife Virginia; wife Susan; four sisters, Jean Granzow, Betty Ottengheime, Barbara Clifford and Joyce Gray Ritchie; and brother John Robert Doolittle. Jay Doolittle is survived by his beloved wife of 26 years, Donna Doolittle; two step-daughters; Whitney Bryan (Salvador Bartera) and Jill Pitkanen (Jeremiah); step grandchildren Korbin and Maddox; two daughters, Jan DeSanti (Mark) and Lani Biller (Frank); one son, Douglas Doolittle (Susan); four grandchildren; Heather, Daniel, Leigh, and Melani, step grandson Evan (Sydney), four great grandchildren; Khloe, Gavin, Finley, and Danielle and step great grandson Xavier.
Visitation will be 12 pm to 2 pm and immediately following will be a memorial service celebrating Jays' life on October 25, 2024, 2 pm at Click Funeral Home, Middlebrook Pike, Knoxville, Tennessee. In celebration of Jay's life, please consider donations to the Small Breed Rescue of East Tennessee or the Wounded Warrior Project an advocacy organization that supports service members returning home from war time service.