Dolores Tate

An enduring love story in turbulent times

Theirs was a relationship that worked! It began at a swimming pool in the Mount Diablo foothills in California at the time of the Cold War and Korean Conflict. John and Dolores Tate’s marriage survived the rush to divorce in the 60’s and beyond. Their dedication to the defeat of local racism in Ohio propelled them into community leadership during a deadly American era of assassinations. Marked by the death of President John Kennedy on a Friday, their committee planning a scheduled symposium on racism the following Sunday agonized over whether to go ahead or not when the possibility existed that no one would show up. The week that Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, Dolores, a white woman, hardly felt up to the task when she was requested to speak about him to African American Sunday school children by their minister. Kent State was a place of family accomplishments, as well as national tragedy. As teachers and parents, the Tates continued to be positive influences for their students and four daughters in spite of car crashes, failed school bonds, and their ailing parents. A-bomb testing in the Nevada desert during John’s brief time of military service turned this story of love into one of later tragic suffering and loss. Curious conclusions and new beginnings end this moving narrative.