Dorothy Dent Park

Dorothy Dent Park died quietly in her home in Ithaca, New York, on Saturday, June 18, 2016 among her family and devoted staff and nurses dedicated to her care and well-being.

Dorothy, so named by her mother from the Greek meaning "God's Gift," was born October 8, 1912 in Raleigh, North Carolina, the only child of Mildred Goodwin Dent and Walter Reed Dent. But she was known by her family and everyone as "Dottie" because her son could not pronounce her given "God's Gift" name when he first began to talk.


Dottie was preceded in death by her husband Roy Hampton Park, founder, chairman and CEO of Park Communications whose broadcast, newspaper and outdoor media conglomerate reached 25 percent of the American public when he died in 1993.

Growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina, she attended both Peace and Meredith College in Raleigh where she majored in English and Sociology. This is where she met her husband, a graduate of North Carolina State University, on a blind date. They moved to Ithaca, New York during a snowstorm on April Fool's Day in 1942 when her husband was hired to run the ad agency for the Grange League Federation, one of the largest farm cooperatives in the world, which later became Agway.

Through this Agricultural Advertising and Research agency, Dottie's entrepreneurial husband went on to found Hines-Park Foods with 124 companies licensed to use the gourmet Duncan Hines name on 250 products, of which only the cake mix line survives today. During the launch of the Duncan Hines food line, Dottie and Roy traveled with Duncan Hines for months at a time to just about every major city in America to meet with mayors and dignitaries for Duncan Hines Days.


After Proctor & Gamble approached Park and purchased the company, he used the stock to launch into the media business. With his wife's devotion and support, and always at his side, they met and charmed legions of prospective businesses in the media field across the country. Her husband's job was to acquire properties and Dottie's job was to host the wives of the owners of the properties he acquired. Dottie constantly entertained during their travels and at home, being always the consummate southern lady, but more than once thought of as a steel magnolia.


A magnolia with a keen sense of humor, however. When her husband hinted that for Christmas he would like the new digital watch Tiffany had just introduced, and she thought it was too extravagant, he bought it for himself. It was engraved "To RHP from RHP, Christmas 1975" but Dottie told him the message should have read "To RHP from your closest friend."

After all the years of helping her husband through his separate careers, Dottie and Roy joined Walter Cronkite and his wife, Betsy, at the Waldorf in New York to celebrate their joint 50th wedding anniversaries. When Walter asked Dottie what her husband had given her, she proudly replied "One thousand dollars for each year we've been married." To which Cronkite said "That's all he gave you? That's awful. If you figure it out, it only comes to $2.74 a day." One can imagine the repercussions from that.

Dottie was involved with numerous organizations from the Garden Club to the Daughters of the American Revolution. Her mother, Mildred, was known as one of the first suffragettes and the DAR's oldest living member when she died at the age of 109.

Upon the death of her husband, Dottie decided to sell Park Communications in its entirety with the proceeds going to the Park Foundation that she and her husband had founded 29 years earlier. With her husband's will designating her President of the newly funded Park Foundation, Inc., she asked her two children and oldest granddaughter to serve as Trustees along with two non-family members. Shortly thereafter, Dottie's remaining granddaughter and grandson joined the Board, and all agreed its core mission was to fund the academic institutions with which her husband had been affiliated during his lifetime.


Park Scholarships were established for four-year undergraduate programs at North Carolina State University and Ithaca College as well as graduate Roy H. Park Fellowships for MBAs at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, and Master's and PhD Park Fellows at the School of Media and Journalism at the University of North Carolina. Initial core grantees also included the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research in Ithaca, the only board position her husband retained until he died, and Public Broadcasting Service programming such as Nova and Nature.

Never has a finer humanitarian walked this earth. Aside from her Foundation, she has personally supported many deserving people who needed a hand throughout many states over the years.

Under her leadership as President of the Park Foundation, Dottie's philanthropy was also spread far and wide, from funding of the Dorothy and Roy Park Alumni Center at her husband's N.C. State alma mater to new headquarters for the Tompkins County Library. In Ithaca it also included the country's first no-kill animal shelter, the Ithaca Free Clinic and even a merry-go-round at Ithaca's Stewart Park. Ithaca College, home of the Roy H. Park School of Communications, also received personal funding for the Dorothy D. and Roy H. Park Center for Business and Sustainable Enterprise. She also donated a new pipe organ for the First Presbyterian Church of Ithaca and approved grants to renovate Cornell's Sage Hall and named a Park Foundation Classroom at this home of the Johnson School. Dottie also personally funded the Park Atrium addition to the Cornell School of Hotel Administration and established the Roy H. Park Library at the School of Media and Journalism in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
In 2003 members of the Park family created a second foundation, Triad Foundation, Inc., which permitted both foundations to pursue the philanthropic objectives that best reflected the diverse needs of their respective Boards. Dottie remained as President of Park Foundation Inc. until her retirement in 2009, and her son headed up Triad which assumed the Boyce Thompson Institute and the Cornell and University of North Carolina Fellowships. To date, between the two Foundations over 2,000 students have graduated from the four Universities with full tuition paid. Since 1995 charitable grants given by both Foundations have totaled over half a billion dollars.

With her whimsical and wry sense of humor she delighted her family, friends and nurses until the end. In her later years, during a trip to her doctor's office in an attempt to test her memory, her daughter asked "Who am I?" to which she responded "If you don't know who you are, how do you expect me to know who you are?"

All in all, Dottie was an ardent lover of nature, animals and mankind. Her love extended to dogs from Bedlingtons to Chihuahuas, from Maltese to Shih Tzus and to Papillons, Poodles, Pomeranians and Pekingese. She kept rabbits, guinea pigs, chipmunks and birds from peacocks to cockatoos and domesticated white turkeys, and even Fantail pigeons, initially a very unusual kind. While driving back from Florida, Dottie spotted them at a roadside tourist attraction displaying all the pastel colors of the rainbow. Into the car a crate went containing a pigeon of each color to accompany the family during the remainder of the trip. It was only several months later, as the pigeons began turning white, that she realized they had been dipped in a food coloring that had begun to wear off. But these plain white Fantails still found a permanent place at this transplanted Southerner's northern home. She will be missed.

Surviving are her son, Roy Hampton Park, Jr. and his wife Tetlow, her daughter Adelaide Park Gomer, all of Ithaca, New York; her grandchildren: Elizabeth Park Fowler and husband Troy of Tampa, Florida, Roy Hampton Park III and his wife Laura of Charlotte, North Carolina and Alicia Park Wittink and her husband Mark of Ithaca, New York. Also surviving are nine great grandchildren: Noble Brooks Fowler, Chase Hampton Fowler, Elizabeth Sumner Park, Samantha Tetlow Fowler, Roy Hampton Park IV, Lawson Brooks Park, Cameron Parham Park, Anneke Dickson Wittink, and Mathijs August Park Wittink.

A Memorial service will be held at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 30 at the First Presbyterian Church of Ithaca with a reception to follow at the Country Club of Ithaca. In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made in her memory to the SPCA of Tompkins County or the Tompkins County Public Library. Arrangements are by the Bangs Funeral Home.

Thursday, June 30, 2016 1:00 PM

Presbyterian Church 315 N. Cayuga St. Ithaca, NY 14850