Dorothy Yetter Cole

Dorothy Jean Yetter was born in Paris, Texas on September 7, 1921. She was the second of four children born to Dr. Clyde Wesley Yetter, Sr., a dentist, and Edith Priddy Yetter. Her three brothers were Clyde, John Edgar (“J.E.”) and Charles. Soon after she was born, the family moved to Saint Jo, Texas, where her father established his dental practice.

Dorothy loved books and reading from an early age, and said she decided to become a librarian “after I found out it was a paying job.” After graduating from Saint Jo High School she entered the Library Science program at Texas State College for Women (now Texas Women’s University) in Denton in 1938.

In 1941, Dorothy met Robert Andros Cole (“Bob”) and the two were married shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, on December 13, 1941. Captain Cole served as a “Hump” pilot in the Army Air Transport Command, flying supplies over the Himalayas from India to China. While her husband was overseas, 1945, Dorothy returned for her final semester at TSCW and graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in Library Science.

In the 1940s and 1950s, the couple traveled extensively around the United States as Bob worked as a pilot for a variety of companies. They lived in many different cities, including Dallas, Los Angeles, Tacoma, Chicago, and White Plains, New York. In the late 1940s and early 1950s Dorothy worked as a librarian at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and later at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dorothy and Bob were living in Salt Lake City when their two children were born, Jonathan Andros Cole in 1958 and Helen Christianne Cole in 1959. In 1960 they moved to Aurora, Colorado for Bob’s work with the Federal Aviation Administration. While working as an FAA inspector, Robert Cole was killed in an airplane accident in 1961. Dorothy remained in the Denver area and raised her two children.

Dorothy was an active member of the First Universalist Church of Denver, and served as the manager of its Bookstall from 1961 to 2001. She was a founding member of a reading group at the church known as the Opsimaths (“those who learn late in life”); the group became an important source of mutual friendship and support.

Dorothy passed peacefully in her sleep at the age of 99 on April 29, 2021.

Dorothy is survived by her son Jonathan and his husband Kenneth Tom; her daughter Helen and her husband Rick Maiden; three grandchildren, Helen’s children by her first marriage: Alexander, Katherine and Nicole Miswell; and ten nieces and nephews.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the First Universalist Church of Denver (https://www.firstuniversalist.org, 303-759-2770).

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