Ancestors

Dorothy Colville Dann

Dorothy Colville Dann was born on 19 July 1921 at Carbondale, Pennsylvania, "in her grandmother's house," as her obituary put it. She was called Dee all her life. Her father, Benjamin G. Dann, was a Kansas-born son of an English immigrant. Her mother, also Dorothy, was a Wellesley graduate and a granddaughter of Eli E. Hendrick, who founded the Hendrick Manufacturing Company at Carbondale and served a term as the city's mayor. The house was probably the Colville house at 101 Lincoln Avenue, where her mother had grown up and where her grandmother Lillian Hendrick Colville still lived.

She was the eldest of four children. Her brothers Benjamin and David were born at Carbondale in 1924 and 1925. By 1929 the family had moved to Maplewood, in Essex County, New Jersey, where her sister Christina was born that July. The 1930 census lists her there as Dorothy C. Dann, aged eight. Her father later worked as a sales representative, and the family lived at 39 Claremont Avenue.

Dee grew up in Maplewood and finished high school there. In the school plays she and her friend Teresa "Moochie" Wright took turns in the leading roles. Wright became a film actress and won an Academy Award. Wright graduated from Columbia High School in Maplewood in 1938, so Dee was probably in the same class.

She went on to Wellesley College, where her mother had graduated in 1919 and her aunt Jessie Colville in 1918. Dee majored in English Literature and graduated with the class of 1942. The Legenda, the senior yearbook, lists her among the Senior Durant Scholars, the college's highest academic distinction, and among the senior members of Phi Beta Kappa, the national honor society for the liberal arts. She also belonged to the Shakespeare Society. Her obituary remembered the same honors: "a Durant Scholar and Phi Beta Kappa in 1942."

At a Wellesley student dance she met James Mitchell Collins, then a student at Harvard Business School. A compiled Collins family genealogy gives their wedding as 16 September 1942 at Maplewood. Her obituary says: "Jim and Dee married in New Jersey before he deployed to Europe to serve in General Patton's Third Army." Their son Michael was born in 1944.

After the war the Collinses made their home in Dallas, and two daughters were born there. Dorothy Colville Collins, who carried her mother's full name, was born on 16 October 1946. She married David Weaver and died before her mother. Nancy Miles Collins was born in 1950.

In Dallas Dee led a long list of civic organizations. She was president of the Junior League of Dallas in 1958-59. She chaired a project called "Teachers for Texas." She was president of the Dallas Women's Club, of Dallas Goodwill Industries, of the Shakespeare Club, of the Hockaday School Mothers' Club and of the Arthritis Foundation of North Texas. She sat on the boards of the Baylor University Medical Center Foundation, the Salvation Army, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Crystal Charity Ball, among many others. In 1997 the Dallas Association of Fund-Raising Executives named her Outstanding Philanthropist.

Her name is on several buildings. At Baylor Hospital in Dallas the Children's Center and the neonatal building are named for her. The labor and delivery unit there is named for her and Jim together. The Goodwill headquarters in Dallas carries her name as well.

Jim Collins served in the U.S. House of Representatives. In Washington Dee was president of the Republican Congressional Wives Club. She also sat on the Smithsonian National Board and was president of the Smithsonian Women's Committee.

Wellesley had a large share of her time. She was a trustee of the college for twelve years and president of its National Alumnae Association. She chaired the Future for Wellesley Committee, which decided that Wellesley should remain a women's college. The performing arts center on the campus is known as "The Collins" in her honor.

Jim Collins died in 1989. In 1995 she married Vance Wiley Torbert Jr., "her high school sweetheart from New Jersey." He had been born in 1920, and he brought four children to the marriage. Vance Torbert died in Dallas in 2006.

She was a charter member of the Century Club, for travelers who had been to a hundred countries or more. She wrote letters all her life, and Barbara Bush was among her correspondents. She spent her summers in Maine.

Dee Collins Torbert died at Dallas on 13 June 2021, aged 99, about five weeks before her hundredth birthday. Her memorial service was held on 9 July 2021 at Highland Park Presbyterian Church. She was buried at Restland Memorial Park in Dallas. She had outlived both husbands, her daughter Dorothy, a granddaughter, Texana Fisher, her brother David and her sister Christina. Her brother Ben survived her and died the next year.

If Dorothy Colville Dann is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Dorothy Colville Dann (1921-2021)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/dorothy-colville-dann-1921-2021-8cf3c9.