Dorothy "Dotty" Jean (Kentner) Anderson

Dorothy “Dotty” Jean Kentner Anderson

Obituary Lovingly Authored by Dotty’s Son, Richard Charles Anderson ~

Dorothy “Dotty” Jean Kentner Anderson, who worked tirelessly to enrich the arts community of Central Pennsylvania, even as she made her own home and life a place of beauty and high style, died Saturday, Feb. 28, in her home with her husband, three children and one of her grandsons by her side.

Dorothy was born Sept. 25, 1937, in Wildwood, New Jersey, to William Herman Kentner and Mary Stineford Cresse. Long before the area became a beachside tourist destination, southern New Jersey was rural, and Dorothy told stories about spending many summers helping out on her mother ’ s family ’ s farm in Cape May.  From the time she was quite young, she was raised by her father ’ s aunts, Dolly and Elsie Kentner, in Philadelphia, where she attended and graduated from the Philadelphia High School for Girls (Girls High). Under her great aunts ’ tutelage, she also learned to play piano from an early age and began her lifelong education in classical music (though as a teen she was not above slipping out to catch the Stan Kenton Big Band when it passed through town).

She matriculated to the University of Pennsylvania in 1955, where she majored in French. Growing up with her German-speaking aunts, she also was quite fluent in German and later became conversant in Italian as well.

W hile attending the University of Pennsylvania, she met William M. Anderson III, of Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, and on Sept. 20, 1958 — five days before her 21st birthday — they wed in West Philadelphia.  After a too-short honeymoon, William shipped out to Karlsruhe, Germany, with the U.S. Army as a Lieutenant in the Transportation Corps. They spent nearly their first year of marriage separated by the Atlantic Ocean, but once Dotty finished her undergraduate degree she hastened to Europe where she and her husband enjoyed traveling the continent, visiting its architectural and natural wonders. Their time in Europe was a presage to the rest of their lives together, which was full of travel and adventure.

While in Germany, Dorothy gave birth to the first of their three children, Wendelyn Wood Anderson, on April 29, 1960. After three years in Germany, William ’ s tour was extended due to the Berlin Wall crisis, and they were transferred back to the states where he was stationed at Fort Eustace, Virginia. While there, Dorothy ’ s second child, William Kentner Anderson, was born Feb. 4, 1962.

Dorothy and her growing brood naturally followed William as he traveled the long arduous road to becoming a physician, moving to Philadelphia, where their third child, Richard Charles Anderson, was born Feb. 22, 1966. The family then went to Johnstown and Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, for Bill ’ s internship and residency; followed by a two-year fellowship in Boston from 1971 to ’ 73, where they lived in an apartment in Brookline, Massachusetts. The location proved a convenient headquarters from which to launch expeditions as the family took up backpacking. On one such fateful hike up Mount Washington in New Hampshire, they were adopted by George, a young bearded collie who had lost his way on the peak and who followed the family home.

While in Boston, Dorothy and her family made their first visit to her Aunt Florence ’ s home on the shores of Lake Willoughby in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. The summer retreat was eventually bequeathed to Dotty and was the site of annual summer holidays spent with family and friends.  Also while in Boston, Dorothy began her own vocational journey. While running a household and wrangling three children, she began to study interior design at the New England School of Art and Design. These studies continued at Harrisburg Area Community College after the family returned to Camp Hill in 1973.

In 1976, they moved to the “north face of Moore ’ s Mountain,” outside of Lewisberry, Pennsylvania, where with help from of her drafting teacher, James A. Morrett, she designed and had built a beautiful, boldly contemporary home in the Pennsylvania woods that she and William dubbed “Anderson ’ s Cobble. ” In addition to serving as a distinct living space and welcoming feasting hall for many parties, the house also became a museum of sorts, with works of art covering every wall, curios and souvenirs collected from wide-ranging travels, and hundreds upon hundreds of books — too many even for the copious shelves Dorothy designed as part of the house.

The children grew up and moved away, but Anderson ’ s Cobble remained a lively venue for gatherings, festivities, philosophical inquiries and, of course, music and art. Dorothy ’ s studies led to licensure with the American Society of Interior Designers, a rigorous process, the completion of which her entire family celebrated. She established Anderson Designs, practicing her art throughout central Pennsylvania for a number of years.

However, Dotty had even grander plans, and she finally acted upon them, returning to school at Drexel University where she earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree, graduating magna cum laude, in 1996. She worked with several firms, gaining experience and preparing to take her board exams, and worked for nearly 10 years with Bink Partnership in Camp Hill.  During that time she participated in numerous projects including additions and/or renovations to Camp Hill Presbyterian church, and the Foose Elementary School in Harrisburg, as well as designing and supervising the construction of an insurance office building on 32nd Street in Camp Hill.

While she loved the challenges and opportunities for creativity afforded by working in an architecture office, the great wide world was waiting for her. As William began to transition to retirement, the pace of the couple ’ s explorations picked up, and she traded her professional aspirations for trips to Africa, Europe, South America and Asia. One adventure even took them to Baffin Island, off the northern coast of Canada, for a whitewater canoe trip on the wild Soper River. Other memorable journeys included a Serengeti safari, idyllic weeks in Provence, France, several visits to Russia and the Baltic, as well as trips to Scandinavia, Poland, China and India for a particularly memorable train journey on “The Palace on Wheels,” and visiting several natural parks to view birds, tigers and other wildlife.

As Dorothy and William entered their 70s, they realized their house on the hill — with its steep driveway and remote location — would become more and more impractical and difficult to maintain, so in 2007 Dorothy designed her second home back in Camp Hill, an arts and crafts masterpiece full of distinctive Anderson touches that nevertheless also fit in perfectly amid the older circa-1940s homes of their neighborhood. Cozy, artful and comfortable, the home had plenty of room to entertain and accommodate the horde of friends they acquired through their 40 years in the area, a spacious studio for painting, room for the 1924 Steinway grand piano she learned on as a little girl, beautiful gardens that included a bank of lavender that perfumed the entire neighborhood, and ample display space for the treasures gathered from their world travels.

Through all these years she also was active in the area ’ s arts community, serving on the boards of Market Square Concerts and the Harrisburg Arts Legacy Fund. In the early 1980s she planned and oversaw the creation of a self-guided walking tour of historic Harrisburg. And in the early 2000s she developed a program she called “Music in the Schools,” which brought professional jazz, classical folk and world music — performed by both local and visiting musicians — to inner city schools, exposing many young people to artists and art they might not otherwise have had the chance to experience.

While she was not one to suffer fools gladly (with the exception of her goofy children), she was quick to make friends, too, and she had an expansive circle of lovely, fascinating, involved people who came to love her for her intelligence, her sense of style and culture, her reflexive selflessness, her fun sense of whimsy and her electric smile.

In 2012 Dotty underwent surgery in an effort to repair damage to her heart valves that had resulted from a childhood bout with rheumatic fever. While it never kept her from going on whatever adventure she chose, after about 70 years the condition began to take its toll. The operation was only partially successful, and though she never complained, she occasionally voiced her frustration at having to gradually slow down. Remarkably, however, she refused to accept a sedentary life.  At the time of her death, she was looking forward to a cruise on the Danube River.

Dorothy ’ s years were full of high beauty, deep thought and reverence for nature, and she worked hard to accomplish her goals and to make a monument of her life and travels with her beloved William. More than any of her countless achievements, however, it was the wide-ranging network of friends — people who truly loved her and cherished every visit with her — that speaks the most to who she was and how she lived.

Dorothy is survived by her husband of 56 years, William; her daughter Wendelyn, of Philadelphia, son William (Joan), of Mount Vernon, New York, and son Richard (Yana), of Jackson, Wyoming; grandsons: William Henry Anderson and Griffen McCoy Salomon Anderson; nieces: Amber Anderson, Kirsten Carlson and Kimber Mitchell; step-brother Kenneth Kentner; and step-sister Julie Burroughs.

A celebration of her joy-filled life is being planned for Sunday, May 17, 2015 at “Le Soleil,” their home in Camp Hill. When available, full details will be posted at www.Myers-Buhrig.com . In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to Market Square Concerts, P.O. Box 1292, Harrisburg, PA 17108, http://www.MarketSquareConcerts.org ; or to the regional theater company Open Stage Harrisburg, 223 Walnut St, Harrisburg, PA 17101, http://www.OpenStageHBG.com .

Funeral arrangements are in the care of by Myers - Buhrig Funeral Home and Crematory in Mechanicsburg, (717) 766-3421.  To read a complete account of Dorothy ’ s life and to sign her official on line guest book, please visit www.Myers-Buhrig.com .

Afterlight (for Dotty) ~ Poem written by Freya Robin / Kirsten (Anderson) Carlson, Dotty’s Niece

. . . Such is our way of thinking—we find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates.” – Jun’ichirōTanizaki, from In Praise of Shadows

you leave us, and I think of

architecture

of walls placed to define and

enclose, eaves to guide rain

from roof crux

to slope of earth

a chain of room and shadow

that banks fires, where hearth

and beam leave

no argument.

We unfold the wing, and

let the slow shade

of your absence lead

to what you built,

that now builds you—

giving its weight to

the fact of you—

that leaving now is not

leaving,but one last alcove

to pattern with shadow

hinged against our

splintered

light