Mrs. Dorothy J Hight

Mrs. Dorothy J. Hight, who devoted her life to her family and was the widow of Ewing B. Hight, died Wednesday, July 1 after a short illness at Shannondale, a senior residential facility in West Knoxville. She was 92. Dorothy Claire Johnson – usually called Dottie or Dot by friends -- was born Oct. 12, 1927 in Sinton, Texas, near Corpus Christi. She was the daughter of the late Fred and Clara Johnson. She also had a brother, the late Frederic Johnson, of Sinton. Mr. Hight died in 2009, at age 84. As a freshman at the University of Texas at Austin in 1945, she walked through the student union one day and joined a small crowd listening to a piano player, Ewing B. Hight, a student from Grand Prairie, Texas. He asked her out for a Coke; they married in 1946. After his graduation in 1948 they moved to Dallas. All three of their children – Bruce, Claire and Marylaine – were born in Dallas. In late 1961, the family moved to Boston for a job transfer, and then in 1966 to Knoxville. (Mr. Hight also worked part-time jobs as a piano player under the name locally of “Tex Hight.”) Mrs. Hight was a full-time homemaker, though from the 1970s to the 1990s she worked at the student health clinic at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. She also served as a volunteer for various charitable organizations, including the Ladies of Charity, and she enjoyed the Organ-izers, for organ music enthusiasts. When not entertaining or otherwise tending to her children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren as they grew up, she was sewing, reading crime mystery novels and solving crossword puzzles. She was a lifelong Catholic and among the first members of what is now St. John XXIII University Parish on the UT-Knoxville campus. She attended there regularly for almost 50 years until declining health made it impractical. Mrs. Hight was always highly sociable and almost always cheerful. As recently as last year, as she endured the difficulties of very old age, she insisted, “I’m in pretty good shape for the shape I’m in.” Mrs. Hight leaves her son Bruce, and his wife Mary, of Knoxville; a daughter, Claire Hughes and her husband Alan Hughes, of Knoxville; and another daughter, Marylaine Driese, and her husband Steve Driese, of Waco, Texas. She doted on her seven grandchildren: Robert E. Hight of Seattle, Wash; Meredith Downing of Knoxville; Elizabeth Sigman of Germantown, Tenn.; Aaron Hughes of Knoxville; Nathan Cox of Knoxville; Trevor Cox of Knoxville; and Mary Catherine Driese of Antigua, Guatemala. She also had nine great-grandchildren. Rose Mortuary Mann Heritage is in charge of arrangements. A funeral mass has been scheduled for Saturday, July 25 at 2:00 pm at St. John XXIII University Parish. The family asks that memorial contributions in Mrs. Hight’s name be made to St. John XXIII University Parish at 1710 Melrose Place, Knoxville, TN 37916, or to the charitable cause of the donor’s choosing. The family is deeply grateful to the staff of Shannondale, who for 10 years provided her not just a consistently high level of professional care but the kind of devotion that grows out of deep personal respect and simple friendship.

Tributes

Mrs. Dorothy J Hight

October 12, 1927 - July 1, 2020