Healdsburg fixture Dotty Walters dies at 79

Dotty Walters

When Dotty Walters first moved to Healdsburg a quarter-century ago, she found herself with long days alone while her husband Jim traveled on business. Never one to kvetch or engage in self-pity, she created her own community on the sidewalk outside the Downtown Bakery on the Plaza.

It started with one kindred spirit, Jim Fagan, and one bench. The two would show up almost daily. With her open, unfiltered interest in people, Walters struck up conversations with passersby that turned into fast friendships. Eventually there were 40 to 50 people who were regulars of what came to be called “The Bench Bunch.”

Walters remained at the center, a big beating heart of guileless good will who engaged in small acts of kindness, not because she read about it in a self-help book, as Downtown Bakery owner Kathleen Stewart observed. It was hardwired in her. It earned her the nickname Dotty Lama.

Walters died Thursday in Healdsburg at age 79, 10 years after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

“There are maybe 10 people you meet in your life of whom who can say they are the most amazing, wonderful, great people. Dotty and Jim (her husband) are in the top 10,” said Chris Blum, a friend from the bench.

“Even after death she is continuing to give. Her brain went to Stanford for research. She would have liked that,” said Jim Walters, her husband and partner for 57 years.

There was never one cause with Dotty Walters. She wasn’t one to join many organizations.

“With Dotty, it was everything. Every encounter,” Blum said. “If anything needed to be done that was for the betterment of that person who needed help or mankind in general, Dotty would do it. It was her essence. She had a huge glowing aura.”

She and Jim would marshal the power of her friendships and connections to help people.

Stewart recalls that when the couple’s housekeeper died in a car crash, they galvanized the community to help her grieving family, including setting up college funds for their children.

“When one of their Bench Bunch friends got sick and couldn’t work and his car wasn’t running they got everyone to pitch in and buy him a new car. It was often the little things,” she said.

Stewart recalled a former employee who was struggling to pull himself out of the trenches after a hard life. The Walters opened up their beautifully restored Victorian on Dry Creek Road for his wedding.

Dotty also passed the hat to raise $10,000 for a new gazebo for the Plaza.

Jim Walters said much of his wife’s spirit filtered down from her parents, Ray and Mary Jane Kidd. Her mother was a particular beacon, having been named Woman of the Year once by the Los Angeles Times. She was the first woman to head up a grand jury, the same jury that indicted Sirhan Sirhan for the assassination of Robert Kennedy.

Born Dorothy Jane Kidd in Glendale, “Dotty” was accepted at Stanford University, where she studied history, earned a graduate degree in education and met her future husband. She taught science and history at Hayward High School, then took time off to raise two children. When she returned to teaching she was dismayed at how the profession had changed. She went back to school and became a dental hygienist, a profession she practiced until she and Jim moved to Healdsburg from Lafayette.

“She would talk to anything that moved,” her husband remembered. “I caught her once in front of the bakery talking to a tree branch because the branch was moving. She loved people.”

When Jim was working on raising money to save Healdsburg’s hospital, she worked in the wings as an adviser and project pusher.

Early in her struggle with Alzheimer’s she organized a party of 300 friends so she could spend time with them while she was still fully functioning.

She did not give in easily to creeping dementia, which she described as akin to “somebody chipping away at the bricks of your brain.”

Several years ago, she agreed to participate in an 18-month clinical trial aimed at finding a cure or treatment for a disease, she said in a 2012 newspaper story, “is not something to be embarrassed about... This is something to be battled.”

“That was so typical of her,” Jim Walters said, noting that Dotty wound up with the placebo. “Even knowing that, she probably still would have signed up. She always wanted to help.”

In addition to her husband, Dotty Walters is survived by her son Craig Walters of Danville, her daughter Cameron Breen of Lafayette, and a sister, Chris Kidd, of Glendale.

A celebration of her life is planned in November. The family suggests contributions in her name to The Alzheimer’s Association/Research, 2290 1st St., Suite 101, San Jose, 95131 or online at alz.org.

Meg McConahey