Dorothy Fritz Eck

Dorothy Eck

January 23, 1924 – September 23, 2017

By Diana Eck



Dorothy Eck passed away peacefully on September 23 at her home in Bozeman in the loving company of her daughter Diana, her daughter-in-law Dorothy, her sister Carolyn Miller, her grandson Bryan, her great grandaughter Shanoah, and her devoted caregiver Alisha Isaly. Dorothy had lived in Bozeman for more than seventy years and she had lived for sixty-four years in the house her husband Hugo built at 10 West Garfield. In her ninety-three years, she had seen great changes and challenges in Bozeman and in Montana and she spent decades in public service working tirelessly and quietly to improve the quality of life for all.



Dorothy Fritz was born in Sequim, Washington in 1924 and was taken home from the hospital to the homestead house that her parents Ike and Peggy had built in a field on a hillside out of town. This was the house that later became the sacred gathering place simply called “The Hills” for the whole extended family. At that point, it had no running water or plumbing, but it became home to Dorothy and her two sisters, Irene and Carolyn. When Dorothy was in grade school, the Fritzes lived in Port Townsend and Port Angeles. She graduated from high school in Bremerton in 1941.



In 1942, Dorothy married Hugo Eck of Anaconda, Montana, a young architect and engineer who worked on naval design in the Bremerton shipyards. In 1946, they moved to Bozeman where Hugo took a position teaching in the Architecture Department at Montana State University. As she raised her two children, Laurence and Diana, she started college at Montana State and eventually earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in sociology and psychology. Years later, in 2009, after a long career in public service, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from MSU.



Dorothy’s public work began as the state coordinator of the Methodist Youth Fellowship. She worked with high school students across Montana and Alberta, accompanying a busfull of us on a Citizenship Tour to Ottawa, Boston, and Washington D.C. With Hugo, she led a workcamp to Patzcuaro, Mexico to build a silo on a UNESCO farm. With other Montanans, she created the Society for International Communication. For more than three decades, the Society brought citizens from Montana to the state of Michoacan in Mexico for projects and study.



In the late 1960s as state president of the League of Women Voters, Dorothy and her friend and colleague Daphne Bugbee of Missoula, became the first women citizen lobbyists at the state capital in Helena. Those were the days of smoke-filled rooms and powerful well-paid corporate lobbyists. As they lobbied to raise the beer tax, Daphne recalled how one of the lobbyists for the liquor industry aggressively asked Dorothy, “There are only two of you, right? And you represent only 300 women in this League, right?” Dorothy looked at him, smiled broadly, and simply said, “Yes.” The top priority of these unpaid citizen lobbyists was to call for a state Constitutional Convention to replace the old 1889 Constitution and address the problem of a chaotic executive branch, a dysfunctional legislature, and a state controlled by corporate lobbies.



Dorothy ran successfully to be a delegate to the Constitutional Convention that was called in 1972. She was elected Vice President for the Western District. Her influence on the Constitution was profound. On the Bill of Rights committee, she worked on the all-important “right to know” and the “right to participate.” For years, government committees had worked behind closed doors discussing proposals unavailable for public scrutiny. Demanding open and participatory government as a right was an important part of Dorothy’s lasting legacy. In this progressive era, Montana moved from being a corporate colony of the Anaconda Copper Company to a citizens’ democracy.



A “clean and healthful environment” was also deemed a right in the Bill of Rights. And under education, the Constitution called for public school education about the cultural heritage of Montana’s Indians. Drafting this new and forward-looking Constitution was only half the battle, however. The Constitution had to be ratified by the people, and Dorothy went on the campaign trail to win popular support at the polls.



The Montana State Constitution was widely hailed as one of the best in the country and the document has been a matter of pride for the bipartisan group of citizens who drafted it. Every year since 1973, that group, now dwindling in number, has had a reunion, which Dorothy faithfully attended. Bob Campbell of Missoula, the historian and organizer of the group, was deeply saddened to hear of Dorothy’s death and spoke of her as “a deep thinker, deeply principled, wise and insightful," with "kind of a charming twinkle in her eye."



In 1973, when Tom Judge was inaugurated as Governor, he asked Dorothy to be the state-local coordinator to put the participatory goals of the new Constitution into practice. She was the first woman to hold high office in the executive branch of Montana government and she chaired the Governor’s Task Force on Citizen Participation. Her commitment to the tranformation of Montana politics led her to run for the state Senate from Bozeman in 1980. She knocked on 4000 doors, she recalled, and met old friends and new. By then, she had been a Bozeman citizen for more than thirty years. As a Democrat, she won the Senate seat in an area that was widely considered to be Republican.



Hugo was enormously proud of her, and while he stayed primarily in Bozeman, he would often come to sessions in Helena. For her part, Dorothy would commute back and forth in her yellow VW bug. She always kept in touch with Bozeman and Gallatin County politics. She was a strong advocate for women’s political participation. In 1984, when a woman was running for County Commissioner and an opponent remarked that she couldn’t even operate farm machinery, Dorothy and several other women decided to drive tractors down Main Street in the Sweet Pea Parade. “Politics is serious,” she said, “but if you get a little humor in, it helps.”



Dorothy served five terms as a state Senator, taking up issues of importance to her and to the people of Bozeman. She was a relentless advocate for funding for education and for Montana’s university system. She worked for more robust health care for children and families and for adequate mental health care. She served on the Select Committee on Indian Affairs, working to get the funding necessary to realize the Constitutional directive to teach about the cultural heritage of Montana Indians. Dorothy served on the Taxation Committee, the Natural Resources Committee and the Health Committee. She was instrumental in restructuring the organization and work of the Environmental Quality Council to make it responsive to and respected by the many private and public interest groups that rely on its research and information, and she chaired its Water Oversight Committee.



More than simply an intelligent legislator, Dorothy was wise. She brought a steady, strategic, and compassionate spirit to her work and won the respect even of those who opposed her. She was able to work “across the aisle” and became, as Bozeman’s Mary Vant Hull put it, “One of the best state senators we’ve ever had.”



When she retired from the Senate in 2000, Dorothy remained an engaged and active citizen and continued to be a role model for so many young people, men as well as women. She gave campaign tips to the uninitiated. She met almost weekly at a Friday morning table for coffee and discussion at the Co-op and that table became a kind of drop-in tutorial on local and state politics.



Now, speaking in my own voice as her daughter, I can say that her gifts to me were immeasurabe: the gift of nurturing, unfaltering love, without a trace of possessiveness; the gift of freedom, letting me roam widely, go away to college, go far away to India; the gift of trust, honoring my own judgement by simply assuming that I would be responsible; and the gift of steady, unflappable presence, able to navigate the most turbulent waters. She somehow watered the soil of my life so that I would grow up strong and independent. And so it was with my late brother Laury as well.



The truth is, she shared these same gifts with many of my friends and the young people of Montana, who affirmed year after year, decade after decade, that she had made all the difference in their own lives. Dorothy Bradley, only 23 when mother nudged her into running for the state legislature, once called my mother “Everybody’s Den Mother.” Perhaps her greatest political legacy was the fact that she kindled the fire of service and can-do commitment in so many. State legislators like Dorothy Bradley, Hal Harper, Mignon Waterman, and Sue Bartlett flourished under her watchful eye. As young politicians, both Senator Max Baucus and Senator John Tester sought her seasoned advice.



As I grew, she grew. I could see the ways in which her life path changed. She was Sunday School superintendent, then Methodist Youth Fellowship coordinator, then president of the League of Women Voters. Next came the Constitutional Convention, the Governor’s office, the State Senate. Life was a journey, with guiding stars and compass points, but not fixed and static. She was ever open to the next challenge. Her accolades were many and her awards fill the wall on the staircase of our home: The Women of Montana Carrying the Torch in Troubled Times Award, at the 75th anniversary of Women's Suffrage; the Bozeman Business and Professional Women "Woman of Achievement Award;" The ACLU Jeanette Rankin Civil Liberties Award for Lifetime Leadership, and countless others.



When I came home to Montana, I loved being Dorothy Eck’s daughter. And when she came to Cambridge and Harvard, she loved being Diana Eck’s mother. There was a precious mutuality in our love and our relationship. Both of us were a bit nonchalant about the fuss of awards, but we loved to bask in the warm light of the other. She loved Dorothy Austin, my beloved life partner, and when the law changed and the time came for our wedding, she spoke before the large congregation at Harvard’s Memorial Church about the circle of family love that brought us all together.



Dorothy was also dedicated to her wider extended family. The Fritz family homestead on the Olympic peninsula became a favorite place of pilgrimage, especially for our large family gatherings in the summer. Dorothy kept family records, compiled the memoirs of her pioneer grandmother and the letters her father sent home during World War I. She also worked with Hugo’s family to create a DVD of Eck family history –from Sweden to America.



Dorothy was preceded in death by her husband Hugo and her son Laurence. She is survived by a large and loving family, including her sister Carolyn Miller of Bainbridge Island, Washington; her daughter, Diana Eck and daugher-in-law, Dorothy Austin, of Cambridge, Massachusetts; her grandchildren Bryan Eck of Bozeman and Amber Eck Duby of San Diego, and four great grandaughters –Shanoah and Tanner Eck, Jordyn and Kathryn Duby. In addition, there are countless nephews and nieces and their families, and a multitude of surrogate family members who considered her home their own. Such was the wide generosity and hospitality of my mother, Dorothy Eck.



A Memorial service will be held at 11:00 a.m. on October 28 at the Bozeman United Methodist Church.

Gifts in honor of Dorothy Eck may be directed to the Montana Community Foundation, PO Box 1145, Helena, MT 59624-1145