Donald Orris Dorman Jr.

Grew up at LaCrosse, Washington, and graduated from LaCrosse High School in 1940 (Find a Grave). In the Second World War he was shot down and captured in December 1944, and held at Stalag Luft I, near Barth, Germany, until the end of the war; he was awarded the Purple Heart for his injuries, stayed in the Air Force Reserves and retired a major (memorial).

In October 1945 he entered Washington State College, joined Sigma Alpha Epsilon and was its president when he met Ruth Ellingwood in her last year there. "Don gave her a big and determined rush, and she decided he was her future." They were married on 3 September 1946 at the First Presbyterian Church in Spokane, the first of the Ellingwood children's weddings, and lived in a small apartment at Pullman while he worked part time in the Agricultural Engineering Department and finished his degree, graduating in 1948. Then they settled at LaCrosse as wheat ranchers (Cudge's memoir, scan 158). He sat on the board of the LaCrosse Wheat Growers.

He was the one son-in-law who saw through the family's sponge-cake joke in 1948: "What's going on here?" ("Don had been in the family long enough to be alert," scan 160). Dick Ellingwood worked for him on the ranch for about six months in 1953 before going to the University of Washington (scan 164).

Their daughters, in the order of Ruth's obituary: Gail (Mrs. Steve Seymour), Nancy (Mrs. Bob Shank), Glenda (Mrs. Brian Thie), Marcia (Mrs. Joseph First) and Joyce (Mrs. Cody Christie) (obituary).

Open questions

• His parents. As a "Jr." he was named for his father, who is not yet identified.
• His obituary of February 2008, which would name his family; the Find a Grave page to be seen.