Dorothy McMeekin represents DAR 39 years, and counting
Jun 29, 2009, 9:41 AM
By GALE L. O'DELL
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| Dorothy McMeekin has been a member of DAR for 39 years. (Photo by Gale O'Dell) |
The 86-year-old is a historian for the Daughters of the American Revolution, an organization made up of people whose ancestors were a part of the American Revolution. She has been a member for 39 years and has traveled to many places across the US because of it.
Her job as a historian this year requires her to put comprise a couple photo albums the Warrensburg chapter's 100th anniversary. This is the seventh major position she has held within the chapter. At one time, she was also the vice regent, and regent four times, including a time when another member resigned. McMeekin was also a recording secretary.
McMeekin said that DAR is good for her, although it is something that is hard to get into.
“It’s a job,” McMeekin said. “It’s hard to do it. My ancestor was Robert Mansfield from Barbarsville, Va.
“Before the Revolution, the colonists, the first people that came over here; people can’t prove (their ancestry) because of the burnings of the courthouses during the Civil War.”
In the 1940s, McMeekin went to what is now the University of Central Missouri for two years before deciding she would rather go into nursing -- a program that wasn’t offered by the university at the time.
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| McMeekin graduated from nursing school in 1946. (Submitted photo) |
“Nursing was hard,” McMeekin said. “We didn’t have all these nurse aides and LPNs, and RNs. We were so restricted. We had a house mother and she did bed checks and study hall checks. Completely different from the freedoms they have now.”
She spent the next several years going back and forth between Detroit and Warrensburg, her hometown.
Her next nursing job in Columbus, Ohio would take her through the next 21 years. It was at this time in 1970 that her mother helped get her in to the DAR, although she would not become an active member of the organization until she came back to Warrensburg two years later.
McMeekin was a nurse for 20 more years in Warrensburg before finally retiring.
Through DAR, she has gone to its Continental Congress that it holds once a year (which is now near July 4) in Washington D.C. In those trips, she visited and saw many other places including the Niagara Falls, Gettysburg, Yorktown, the Liberty Bell, Mount Vernon and Colonial Williamsburg. She has also been to 46 states.
Her favorite trip was when the chapter went to the Continental Congress one year and stopped in Savannah, Ga.
“We went to this cemetery down in the south of Savannah, and this old church,” McMeekin said. “One of the women asked the guy if she could play the organ. She played and we all sang.
“It’s just the little things like that, that made you really think.”
McMeekin also recalls visiting the home of one of her ancestors.
“It’s a log cabin and it’s now being used as a farm place, more or less,” she said. “We went to the burial site. It’s up on a hill and it looked like it was 100-200 years old, since it was made well.”
McMeekin said she can’t travel like that now. She missed the last trip to Washington D.C. because her legs and back aren’t what they used to be. Still, she goes to the meetings in the chapter and state, including the one in Jefferson City.
She also has many medals from the organization, including the Honorary Chapter Region Medal. Through the years, she has seen DAR have its 100-year anniversary and the state's DAR have its 100-year anniversary -- and now her own chapter is 100-years-old.
Virginia Campbell, is a friend of McMeekin’s through DAR. Campbell recalls how devoted her friend is to the organization.
“She is extremely active,” Campbell said. “It is her main thing, really, as far as social organizations and things. And it is very important to her.
“We are very close friends, and we’ve always gotten along. We kind of think alike, I guess.”
“I enjoy DAR,” McMeekin said. “It’s a patriotic organization. It makes me feel good. You can’t have enough of that.”
