Doris Elizabeth White, beloved wife, mother, grandmother, teacher and friend, quietly left this life for the next on Saturday, August 1, 2020, to be reunited with her husband, Clinton L. White, who passed away in 2018.
Born April 6, 1934, to Ernest and Erma Shelburne of McMinnville, Oregon, she grew up on the family dairy farm which she and Clinton would eventually own and operate.
Her early schooling was in a one-room schoolhouse on Baker Creek Road. She attended McMinnville High School and graduated from Willamette University.
While attending a summer work/ministry program in eastern Oregon for the Methodist church, Doris met Clinton, and they were married a year later. At the time of Clinton’s death, they had been married 63 years.
Throughout her long life, she was both mother and teacher. As a teacher, she loved her students and worked hard to create resilient, life-long learners and readers, as she herself was. She extended herself as a mother to all who were in need of one, no matter their circumstances. She did so with great compassion, intelligence and practicality.
Their life took them to Chicago, where Clinton briefly attended graduate school, and then on to teaching in small towns across the Northwest, where they lived their Christian life in service to others. In each situation, they matured in compassion and understanding during their work on Indian reservations, in migrant camps and in children’s homes.
They moved back to the family farm, where they lived for 35 years, believing in its values which determined the way their animals were raised, the land was cared for, and how the people who worked for them were treated.
Doris was active for many years in the Methodist Church and later the Cooperative Ministries. She ended her teaching career at West Valley Academy in Sheridan, Oregon.
Doris is survived by her daughters, Mary (Joseph) and Ruth (David); along with her grandchildren, Michael Marsh and Bethany (Daniel) Ray; and great-grandsons, Waylon and Houston.
A memorial will be held at a later date. Donations may be made in their names to Cooperative Ministries of McMinnville and to the
Fellowship of Reconciliation USA.