Doris Gotsch

Doris J. Gotsch, age 73 of Alva WY, died Sunday, April 30, 2017 at the Rapid City Regional Hospital from complications following surgery. Doris’ life will be celebrated at an informal family and friends service at the Gotsch home located at 160 Buck Creek Trail on Saturday, June 3, 2017 at 11 am. Funeral arrangements are with Leverington Funeral Home of the Northern Hills in Belle Fourche. Doris was born to Ernest and Mary Overocker on April 14th, 1944 in Davenport, Iowa. She spent some of her early years on the family farm near Milford, Iowa after which the family moved to Tempe, Arizona in 1950. After attending school in Tempe, she enrolled at Arizona State University and graduated in 1967 with a degree in Office Management, then was employed at various secretarial jobs in Palm Springs, California and later Phoenix, Arizona. About this time, her brother-in-law, Lee Murdock, citing that “she was in grave danger of becoming an old maid”, introduced her to his flight instructor, Jim Gotsch. Jim and Doris were married in Prescott, Arizona on April 20, 1974 and began their lives together in a home he had built on the outskirts of Prescott. They purchased a half interest in a Piper Cherokee 140 in which Doris earned her Private Pilot license. In 1980 they moved to Casper, Wyoming where Doris was employed by Marathon Oil Company. In 1986 Marathon transferred Doris to the Cody, Wyoming office from where she would retire in 1999 as an Environmental and Safety Technician. Anticipating the end of their working days, they purchased 65 acres north of Alva and proceeded to build a complex that included a cabin, a smaller cabin for Doris’ hobbies, a large heated workshop, two pole barns and a shooting range. Doris will be remembered as a gregarious live wire with a sassy sense of humor, a person of perpetual motion and loquacious to a fault. She was creative, adventurous, stubborn, loving, caring, and a perfectionist in every endeavor. Even with a college degree, Doris never stopped he education. While living in Prescott, Casper and Cody, she took classes on whatever interested her at the time. Doris never fully retired. She loved to travel and was an active partner in their part time retirement hobby business that took them to gun shows all over the western U.S. She was an Election Judge for the Alva Precinct and worked as a substitute teacher in the Crook County and Gillette school districts. Her hands were never still. Knitting, crocheting, cross stitch and especially quilting were part of her passion and at the time of her passing she was President of the Crafty Stitchers Guild in Hulett. It should be noted that she gave away most of her quilts as she created them. Under Jim’s tutelage Doris became a hunter who could shoot, gut and skin her own deer and she later qualified as an NRA Pistol Instructor. Her interests included genealogy; she amassed extensive records on her ancestors and spent many hours tromping around graveyards searching for their burial sites. Doris was happy in her cabin home but nearly drove her long-suffering husband over the edge with her enthusiasm for redecorating, remodeling, rebuilding, landscaping, and other home improvement projects. Doris is survived by her husband, James and sister, Ellen Murdock; a son, Robert Powell of Washington State, a grandson, granddaughter, great-grandson and numerous nieces and nephews.