Dorothy Marie Garage

Dorothy Marie Garage, a deeply loving woman and proud New York native who always put family and friends before herself, passed away peacefully in her home in Houston on Wednesday, May 21, her 80th birthday. Her two surviving sisters, Mary Ellen and Theresa, were by her side when she passed under hospice care following a brief illness.

Born on the U.S. military base Mitchel Field in Uniondale, Nassau County, New York, on May 21, 1945, to a father who’d enlisted in the U.S. Army at 16 during World War II and a homemaker mother who immigrated from Canada, Dorothy grew to develop a commanding, take charge personality that she combined with a bottomless love and devotion to her family and friends that would forever endear her to them.

If a family member or friend needed a helping hand with an everyday challenge or was in a tough spot, Dorothy was first to help, not just through comforting words, but through actions and deeds. She never forgot a birthday of her five brothers and sisters or her loving and devoted nieces, nephews, and great nieces. She was equally kind, caring and generous with close friends of family members who were held tight to her like family; and Dorothy, or “Aunt Dorothy’’ or “Aunt Dee” to many of them, was remembered for it, as her love and attentions had a profound effect on them for all their lives.

Dorothy was the family matriarch and kept in touch in a way that stitched together all her family members and many friends, reaching out through phone calls, or in earlier years, through visits to their homes. In later life and with the advent of the Internet, Dorothy became adept at email, sending around knee-slapping funny memes, poking fun at she and her fellow senior citizens, the lighter side of child-rearing, and other subjects.

She was an organizer – whether it was for a family member or friend’s birthday party, an attic cleaning project, family vacation preparations or taking charge of the massive Nassau County Sheriff’s Department summer picnic that drew hundreds of officers and other staff and their families to the sprawling Eisenhower Park in East Meadow each year. The Sheriff’s Department, where Dorothy worked for 35 years after a brief stint in Nassau County Family Court, was also like family to her. She and the small team she headed worked long hours at the Nassau County Correctional Center (at the time, simply the Nassau County Jail) taking care of payroll and other personnel duties. She’d dress early each morning in her crisp white shirt and gray slacks with black piping of the uniform of the Nassau County Sheriff’s Department, arriving at the office in the corrections compound each day by 6, and often staying until early evening to get the job done. She wore shield number 123, seeming almost like a metaphor for the orderly, no-nonsense way she conducted herself and her life.

Emblematic of a life of selflessness dedicated to family, she drew on her salary early on to buy her mother her first set of matching dinner dishes. Dorothy could bring laughs home as well. Like the time she was learning to drive and hit the big tree next to the driveway in Roosevelt. Her brother Vinny remembers how she swore up and down that the tree had moved! Ironically, Dee would become known as a great driver, whether adeptly taking on the famously crowded and aggressive New York traffic head on or taking the wheel on her many road trips bringing family to Canada to visit with Aunt Marion, Uncle Bill, and cousins Wayne and Marie. She also enjoyed the cabin she’d purchased there near Fredrickton. 

She spent many years with the Sheriff’s Department. And while she loved the Department and her fellow workers, who in turn loved her, she also helped lead a groundbreaking federal class action lawsuit for equal pay for women in the Department who were paid less than their male counterparts in similar roles. The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), AFL-CIO, took up the case in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. It was Dorothy’s deep sense of fairness and standing up for what was right as well as the rights of women who would come after her that drove her to help lead such a difficult battle.
Dorothy was named Woman of the Year for Nassau County at one point.

The seeds of Dorothy’s pioneering federal court battle on behalf of women may well have been planted at Dominican Commercial High School, an all-girls Catholic high school in Jamaica, Queens, from which Dorothy graduated in 1963. Her work ethic was honed there as well, as she and her sister Mary Ellen, would take a city bus over an hour to and from school each day from the family home in Roosevelt. For grammar school, she attended Queen of the Most Holy Rosary School in Roosevelt.

Dorothy would remain a devout Catholic her entire life; regularly contributing right up through the end of her life to many different charities and Catholic religious orders. As the proud daughter of a U.S. Army veteran who hid his true age of 16 in order to join the war effort in WWII, Dorothy was also a patriot, and loved the freedoms, opportunity, and independence enjoyed by Americans, thanks to the servicemen and women who fought for and gave their lives for this great nation. 

Dorothy moved to Houston 17 years ago to be with and assist her sister, Mary Ellen Maarouf; where the two lived happily among caring and loving neighbors who are like family to both. She arrived in Houston after living for a number of years in New Jersey with her sister Theresa Hooker and her family, who she moved in with to help with a serious illness in the family, retiring from the Sheriff’s Department earlier than she would have otherwise to do so. Prior to living with Theresa and her family, Dorothy lived with her mother’s sister, Loretto, known simply as “Auntie’’ in Merrick, New York, and before that had her own place for many years in East Meadow.

Dorothy is survived by her brother, Louis Vincent Garage and his wife, Fran; her sisters, Mary Ellen Maarouf, and Thersea Marie Hooker and her husband Jim; and nieces and nephews April Marie Rose and her husband Jim; Ann Hamblin and her husband Jeff; Antoinette Howe and her husband Jason; Joshua Christian Baer; Brianne Patrick Garage; Evan James Hooker and Casey Marie Hooker; and Great Nieces Ashley Rose, Arianna and Savannah Howe, and Eren Powers; and many, many close friends.

She is preceded in death by her loving father and mother, Louis and Winifred “Winnie’’ (nee King) Garage; her beloved sister and her husband, Josephine and Edward Vanderbeck; and her dear brother Edward Garage.

A memorial service will be held Saturday, May 31, at 2 p.m. at St. Justin Martyr Catholic Church in Houston, TX. Burial will be private.