Delcie’s Corner to honor ‘everybody’s grandma’ at Fairfield Twp. YMCA

As her children were growing up, Doose was involved in school activities and parent volunteer school groups, said her daughter, Jocelyn Doose.

“She read to us every night while we were washing the dinner dishes,” Jocelyn Doose said. “If it was a real good book, we washed dishes real slowly.”

Doose was a charter member of the East Butler County YMCA, said board chairman Bill Miller. She was an original member of the YaYa’s, a senior citizens group that evolved into a group of people wanting to make a difference for the YMCA, including doing auctions for the annual support campaign, he said.

Part of her involvement with the YaYa’s included reading to children, Miller said.

“It became something that was great for the Y because they’d love to sit on Delcie’s lap and read a book,” Miller said. “She was quite the attraction for it. She was like everybody’s grandma.”

The YMCA will dedicate Delcie’s Corner on Wednesday. Small groups will be invited to see the reading area starting at 1 p.m. at the Morris Road facility. A dedication will take place at around 1:40 p.m., said Miller, who called Doose “a prolific storyteller.”

“Just a wonderful person, volunteer for everything,” he said. “She was at everything with us, was such a key member of our group.”

Education and literacy were important parts of Doose’s life, Jocelyn Doose said.

She graduated high school in Alabama at 16 years old, with honors, and when she started her family, she passed her passion for reading onto her three children.

“Every book was an adventure,” Jocelyn Doose recalled hearing from her mother, who worked at a number of local businesses throughout her life, including at First National Bank and Elder-Beerman in Hamilton.

Jocelyn Doose and her sister, Leah Higdon, said her mother wasn’t big on being the center of attention, but wouldn’t mind being honored with Delcie’s Corner.

“As long as it would encourage reading, she would be very happy,” Jocelyn said.