Here’s an obituary you don’t read every day — an Arizona woman who died earlier this month worked not for one, but two bona fide Route 66 icons during her lifetime.
Dorthy “Dottie” Ann Hatch Hansen, 83, of St. Johns, Arizona, died Oct. 19. She was born in Pinedale, Arizona, but spent most of her formative years in the Route 66 town of Joseph City, Arizona, and went to high school in Holbrook, Arizona, also on 66.
Here are the most significant Route 66 links, from her obituary by Burnham Mortuary:
Always a hard worker she had a few noteworthy jobs along the historic Route 66 including working at the Wigwam Hotel (sic) and the Jack Rabbit Trading Post. A fun story that she would like to tell was when she would gather small snakes and other curiosities to sell them to the trading post for spending money.
She also spent some of her adult life in Joseph City, as well.
Hansen would have graduated from high school in Holbrook about 1953 and would have lived in the area from about 1960 to 1966, when she finally moved to St. Johns. The Jack Rabbit was founded in 1949, and the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook opened in 1950, sitting only 16 miles apart.
Does anyone who frequented the Wigwam or the Jack Rabbit during that era remember her?
Hansen was buried Saturday at St. Johns Cemetery.
(Image of Dottie Hansen via Burnham Mortuary; image of the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, Arizona, by Thomas Hawk and Jack Rabbit Trading Post by Marcin Wichary, both via Flickr)
not far from the petrified forest if I’m thinking of the same place.