Resultant from an over-abundance of birthdays, the family of Doris Rutherford Hilpert announces her departure on March 11, 2016. Doris was the only remaining family member from "The Greatest Generation."
Doris, who claimed to be “in my 80s,” was born February 16, 1919 at the home of her parents, Stella Sarah Sanders and James Stewart Rutherford, in Kansas City, Missouri. The only-child moved to western Colorado in the early 1920s. In Grand Junction, she attended public schools and received an AA Degree from Mesa Jr. College before spending two years at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins. While there, she was literally the crown of the social scene, was voted CSU’s “Miss Popularity,” and elected an officer of Gamma Phi Beta sorority. To pay college tuition and expenses, she, and her beautiful red hair, worked as a model for Denver’s upscale Neusteter Company Department Store.
Following the WWII death of her fiancé, she returned to Grand Junction where she ultimately became employed as an administrator for the Federal Government. There in 1947, she met a man who had been transferred from Washington D.C. by the U.S. Geological Survey to lead the Colorado Plateau Project’s uranium exploration team. She and Lowell S. Hilpert married 11-months later and remained so until his death in 1992.
Doris re-entered federal employment in the 1970s. Prior to her 1997 retirement, she spent the last two decades of her career serving the Veterans’ Administration Day Hospital where she developed long-lasting relationships with both staff and patients.
She lived in Salt Lake City from 1959 until 2012 and returned to residency last August. In her younger years, she served as hostess to the international colleagues, dignitaries, and leaders of science that Lowell brought as guests to our home as well as entertained artists ranging from principles of the "Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo" to housing contestants of the "Gina Bachauer Piano Competition."
Her college yearbook affirmed her love of the performing arts: “I would rather dance than anything.” She performed a comical song-and-dance titled "I’m the Belle of Hopkins Corner" at a CSU talent show; the unsophisticated rendition was polar opposite to her persona. Thereafter, campus-wide, she became lovingly known as “the Belle.” Doris held several post-retirement acting gigs, most significantly inclusion in "Touched by an Angel," and always reveled in dressing to-the-nines at Ballet West, the Utah Symphony, and local theatre productions. In recent years, she attended Wasatch Presbyterian Church.
Doris is survived by her daughter Renee L. Hilpert and husband Ethan Wilson Cliffton of San Francisco, grandson John Lowell Brandon Hilpert of San Diego, granddaughter Jillian Hilpert Garber of Boston, and granddaughter Sarah E. Cliffton of Ft. Collins, CO. She is also survived by daughter Michelle H. Ebersole of Salt Lake City; former son-in-law William P. Ebersole of Louisville, KY; granddaughter Blythe D. Ebersole and grandson Patrick T. Ebersole, both of Chicago. She was predeceased by her spouse and “our little boy lost – Gregory Lowell.”
The family thanks the staff at Canyon Hospice for their kindness these past six-months and, in particular, to the skills, compassion, and generosity of Michelle Williams, RN and Doris’ caregiver extraordinaire Maria Vasquez and her entire extended family.
A celebration of her life will be held at a later date. Inquiries may be addressed to miss.popularity.csu@gmail.com. Arrangements entrusted to Starks Funeral Parlor. Online condolences may be offered at www.starksfuneral.com
“If I should leave you whom I love grieve not, nor speak of me with tears, but laugh and speak of me as if I were there beside you. When you hear a song or see a flower I loved, please do not let the thought of me be sad. For I am loving you just as I always have. You were so precious to me. There are so many things I still wanted to do, so many things to say to you. Remember it was leaving you that was so hard to face. We can not see beyond, but this I know: I loved you so and I have cared about you until the very end of life itself. It was heaven to be with you and I have loved every moment with you.”
“In one of those stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night.
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
“When he shall die,Take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Good-night, sweet mother; and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. ”
