Her own woman

Anyone who knew Dolores Huff knew she was a survivor.

Huff's life, replete with adversity and challenges, was a living testimony to a tireless spirit, and every one of her friends and family would agree.

What none of her friends knew about Huff, however, was her age.

"That was a state secret," said her husband Bill Huff. " I could tell you, but I would have to kill you."

Indeed, one of Huff's last wishes before dying from cancer on Sept. 9 was that her age remain a secret.

The reason?

"She was absolutely beautiful and didn't look her age," explained Huff's daughter Darla Johnson. "We'd try to steal her driver's license to find out," she laughed. "My brother and I didn't even know!"

Life's curveballs began at age 6 when Huff's parents divorced. Since neither parent could afford to raise her, she lived with foster families until she reached high school. "She had a very difficult childhood," was all Bill Huff could say about those years.

As a child, Huff had rheumatic fever and missed a full year of grade school. When she was well enough to return, her family didn't want her walking to the distant school, so they advanced her two grades to attend the much closer junior high. Though younger than her peers, Huff succeeded, eventually becoming drum major at Lewis and Clark High School.

Huff later attended Kinman Business University, where she earned a bachelor of secretarial sciences degree. "She could type 180 words per minute," Johnson said. "It sounded like a teletype when she typed."

Huff was the last of a dying breed of secretaries, able to record 200 words per minute in shorthand. Her skills helped her earn the school's coveted IDY award: "I Dare You to Climb the Ladder of Success."

She worked her way through school at the Spokane County Sheriff's Department. Though employed to record prisoner confessions and that sort of thing, Huff was needed for more dangerous work.

"She'd go on stakeouts or on undercover work when they'd need a male deputy to appear like he's married," said Bill Huff. She was deputized for these stakeouts, given a uniform and a pistol, making Huff the first female deputy in Washington State.

From that experience, Huff met her first husband Donn Olson, and the couple moved near Olympia where Huff took a job with the state Legislature while in session. One representative she worked with was Spokane's King Cole, who employed Huff to type the bill establishing Expo 1974 in Spokane.

Huff and Olson divorced, leaving Huff a single mother with two children, a situation similar to her own childhood.

"She never let those difficulties hold her down. She just kept pushing through," Johnson said. "She always said, `When life hands you lemons, make lemonade,' and she lived that."

No longer tied to Olympia, Huff accepted Cole's offer to move back to Spokane and work in the Expo operations department. It was there she met Bill Huff.

"She was very lively, very charming," said Bill Huff of his first impression of Huff. "She was intelligent and attractive."

These positive attributes were at times another source of adversity, especially for such a career-oriented woman like Huff.

"There was a lot of prejudice in the workplace against pretty women," Bill Huff said. "But she always won everybody over."

In 1974 Huff accepted a job with the Spokane Postal Service as a labor relations representative, where her work in the Legislature enabled her to win many cases. Soon she was promoted to postmaster in Ronan, Mont., even though she'd never handled mail before, where she lived during the week while returning to her North Side home on weekends.

In 1990, Huff was diagnosed with breast cancer, resulting in a mastectomy. The breast cancer returned again in 1999, along with a second mastectomy, followed shortly by ovarian cancer.

But true to her spirit, Huff would not let the illness hinder her life. She would drive 60 minutes to Missoula on her lunch break for her monthly radiation treatment, and then drive back to work.

"She'd barely schedule this cancer into her agenda," Johnson said.

The ups and downs of Huff's battle with the illness prompted many friends to encourage her to write a book on her experience. Huff, with her traditional good-natured perspective, replied: "If I did write a book, I would title it `Don't Wear Your Wig Sideways,'" which Huff had once done when a visitor unexpectedly came to her house.

Huff retired a month before she died, determined to prove her doctor's diagnosis wrong and enjoy traveling with her husband.

Her last days, Johnson said, were as joyous for Huff as any day in her life, thanks to a special visitor.

Lying in her hospital bed, away from the comforts of home, Huff was delighted to see her dog Shadow, smuggled into the hospital by Johnson.

Shadow jumped up onto her bed, himself an orphan abandoned at the door of the post office seven years ago, where Huff raised him from illness into a healthy, happy friend. With a Mariners game on the television, Huff, a diehard M's fan, could forget about the cancer and enjoy the moment.

"She didn't want anything else," Johnson said of that day. "Just Shadow and the Mariners."

Copyright 2002 Cowles Publishing Company
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.