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Residents remember 'Dottie'

Joshua Brown

ALBANY — A prominent former Albany resident died Monday following a hip surgery last week, a friend said Tuesday.

Dorothy “Dottie” Zimmerman, who lived in Tarpon Springs, Fla., died Monday at age 90. Doctors had performed surgery Thursday on her hip to reduce some pain she had been having, friend Jo Jones said Tuesday.

Zimmerman’s funeral and memorial services have not been set, Kimbrell-Stern Funeral Home Owner David Stern said. The funeral home was waiting to hear back from family and friends to determine when the services would be, though they will probably be after the holidays, he said.

Friends remembered Zimmerman Tuesday as a lover of theatre and the arts.

“She was a lovely person, she really was,” Jones said. “She was very highly educated. ... The theatre was her love.

“She did beautiful needlepoint. She was a great cook. She loved to entertain and I think she spoke French pretty well.”

Zimmerman came to Albany in 1949 from New Jersey with her parents. She worked as a secretary for Gray Communications, was a past president and director of Albany Little Theatre and Albany Concert Association, a member of the board of trustees of the Albany Museum of Art was named as the Salvation Army’s Volunteer of the Year once, Stern said.

She was a member of Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in Albany for several years.

Zimmerman moved to Tarpon Springs, Fla. several years ago and lived with longtime friend Sally Schatz, friends said.

Albany resident Paul Lipsey, who co-starred with her in several theatre productions, remembered her as an avid theatre enthusiast and active community member.

“She was very active, much more so in all the cultural life in Albany,” he said. “She was just a very nice lady. We were friends for a very long time.

“But she would lose her temper sometimes and that’s when you better get out of the way,” he said with a laugh.

Lipsey said he came to Albany in 1948 and shortly after that starred opposite Zimmerman in “Private Lives”, a production in which the two played a married couple who divorced, remarried and met each other again on their honeymoons.

Marcy McCarty, who later took Zimmerman’s position as corporate secretary for Gray Communications after Zimmerman left the company, remembered the woman as very opinionated.

“She knew what she wanted, knew what she thought and was quick to let you know,” McCarty said. “She did not hold back what she wanted to say — she was a feisty woman.”

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