Irene Elsa Frieda Michenfelder Dodds

November 11, 1931 – January 22, 2025 – Irene Elsa Frieda Michenfelder Dodds died on January 22, 2025. She died at Providence Portland hospital two days after suffering a major stroke. She had been in reasonable health prior to her death and had remained mentally sharp and active until the end.

She was such a wonderful person. She had so many interests, talents, abilities and different aspects to both her life and personality that it is amazing to reflect on them and so sad to contemplate that they are gone.

To get a sense of who she was, it is perhaps best to list just some of her abilities and interests and a few unique experiences she had in her life. She could ice skate, she was a good skier, she liked sailboats and sailed in the Great Lakes, she loved water and was a good swimmer. She had been an excellent driver. Throughout most of her life was extremely fit and athletic. She was a great walker. She played the accordion. She loved the outdoors, nature and wildlife especially birds. She had a special affinity for trees and was a great planter of trees. She detested those who needlessly cut down trees. She was an environmentalist long before Rachel Carson wrote “Silent Spring”

She was a great gardener and an almost ridiculously meticulous housekeeper. She could sew and had been a very good seamstress. She had loved to dance and been a good dancer. Of all the activities that she pursued in life cooking was the talent of which she was the most extraordinarily gifted. Her cooking ability stayed with her essentially undiminished until the end. She owned over a hundred cookbooks covering recipes and cuisines from around the world. Such was her mastery and artistry as a cook she would continue to tinker with and improve recipes that she had been making for decades, never complacent, always trying to improve.

She was a voracious reader especially in her youth, her consumption of the written word only slowing, but never stopping even in old age. Her love of words also manifested itself in a love of crossword puzzles, which she continued to do right up to the end of her life. She and her son completing the New York Times crossword every day. She could speak and read German fluently.

She loved music; classical, musicals and most especially opera. For many years she had season tickets to the Portland Opera. She also loved to travel and remembered with special fondness a trip to Ireland she took after retirement.

Tall and willowy when younger, she had modeled at fashion shows in Detroit department stores. She loved fashion and in earlier days, had haunted consignment and vintage clothing stores (she was always frugal) dressing very chicly at little cost. The young Audrey Hepburn (whom she adored) was a fashion avatar.

She survived many misfortunes in life including early bouts of both tuberculosis and polio, as well as the second world war in Germany. She remembered watching the City of Wurzburg burn in the distance and also of waking up her family to hide in the cellar when she sensed bombers crossing the Rhine hundreds of miles away. Her father, whom she adored, who had been unwillingly drafted into the Luftwaffe was killed when his troop train was strafed by RAF fighters. His death left an emotional scar that never really healed. If a cousin had not knocked her to the ground, she would have died during a rocket barrage when she was thirteen. Having lived through Hitler’s Germany she harbored a lifelong loathing for dictators, bigots, fanatics and demagogues of all strips.

The great romantic love of her life was her husband David W. Dodds. When he died suddenly of a heart attack, she was left a widow at just 38 years old. She never remarried and a part of her was never the same after that. But, she was not a complainer and she poured a considerable amount of her life energy into raising her young son.

She lived in the same house in the Robinwood area for over sixty years. She loved her house and the Robinwood neighborhood. She was instrumental in bringing about the creation of Robinwood Park. It is no exaggeration to say that without her Robinwood Park would not have occurred.

She was an incredibly kind and loving person who had real compassion and empathy for almost everyone she met. People would spontaneously talk and confide in her and she had a special way with children, cats and dogs. That said she did not suffer fools and could not abide cruelty, destructiveness, selfishness and bullies. She had a particular distain for liars. No kindness that was bestowed upon her, however, was ever forgotten.

Having been so capable and self-sufficient she keenly resented the diminishments and indignities of old age, but none the less carried on with remarkable grace and good humor.

In addition to all of the above, plus so much more that could be added, she was the most wonderful mother to me her son David. Kind, loving, endlessly supportive, but also funny and just fun to be with. We were best friends just as much if not more than mother and son. We shared an easy camaraderie and rapport and never lacked for new and interesting things to say to one another. We were a team. I will miss her always.

There will be a memorial service at Emmanuel Presbyterian Church 19200 Willamette Dr. at 1 pm on Saturday April 12, 2025, brief reception to follow.