DOTTIE POPE & DON HOLM
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All the interior walls of Dottie Pope's Shawnee home are white—clean and bright, ready for the next piece of art she creates or brings home. The walls form the backdrop for one of her deepest passions.
The white walls are also a perfect metaphor for the open way in which Dottie holds herself, ready for an artistic inspiration, a newfound friend, a beckoning road trip, a big adventure. Every possibility is out there, waiting to be noticed and embraced.
The home's clean lines and airy openness also reflect Dottie's 14-year relationship with Don Holm. After three marriages each, these deeply-connected-but-single people believe they've discerned the formula for a successful partnership: heavy on nurturing, light on strings.
Dottie
Dottie Khachadoorian was born in Albany, N.Y., and grew up by a small lake in Averill Park, N.Y. She is one of three daughters of Armenian immigrants. They couldn't help their daughters with their school work but believed deeply in education, so they sent Dottie to Emma Willard, a preparatory school in Troy, N.Y.
"Dad said women were the most important people to educate, because they would be raising the next generation of Americans," Dottie recalled. "The prep school changed me, opening me up to the world and all of life's possibilities."
Dottie's father was a successful American businessman, and an egalitarian who treated everyone with respect. From her parents she learned "always to champion the rights of women, minorities, and vulnerable members of the community," she said.
After prep school she earned a degree in comparative literature from Boston University, where an important mentor was Howard Thurman, an influential author, philosopher, theologian, educator, and civil rights leader who was dean of the chapel at Boston University for more than two decades. She still speaks of him with reverence.
Dottie married, traveling through Europe and the Middle East, and living in Scotland and Australia with her husband. After 17 years, she divorced. Her second marriage lasted just five years, ending when her husband died. Eight years was the span of a third marriage, which ended when her husband left her for a younger woman.
"After ending one marriage myself, losing a husband to death, and having a husband leave me, I figured I'd done it all," Dottie laughed. "I knew I never needed to try again."
But there is no bitterness in that statement from a woman who tends to see the good in everything. Of the past men in her life, she says sincerely, "They were all my teachers."
When Dottie was in middle age, a friend suggested she pursue a master's degree in social work as her ticket to better positions doing the kind of work she loved. That intrigued her, and she earned an MSW from the University of Kansas. For a time she was a social worker for Kansas City Hospice, an organization she holds in high regard.
Then, in 2002, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent a lumpectomy, had radiation treatments, and took anti-cancer medications for four years. She has been cancer-free for nine years.
"I work cyclically on my art," she said. "I make art, then I stop and immerse myself in books, then I go to galleries for inspiration, then I make art again."
Because she's such a people-lover, Dottie welcomes new friendships, throwing open her arms and her home. Her friends run the gamut of ages, but most are younger than she is. She nurtures both "new girlfriends" and pals from 40 years ago. She whips up Greek meals for longtime clay artist friends and is known for her "Tea and Topics" Sunday gatherings of interesting women. All in all, she's a master at maintaining relationships.
And though she loves people and being on the go, Dottie is learning to pull back when she feels the need.
"I'm being more selective about what I'm doing," she said. "I say no a lot now. I used to be a 'good girl,' which meant always saying yes—but now I don't do anything I don't want to do."
Don
Don Holm, 79, finds inspiration and solitude in Bonner Springs, where he designed and built a home in 1990 in "a great rural neighborhood." There, in his three-bay shop with a lift, he's restoring an old Harley and some other motorcycles. A Subaru car has been on that lift for five years, and his goal is to get it off. He putters, tinkers, dismantles, rebuilds, and creates his own form of art with machines. Mostly motorcycles. Mostly Italian. He also uses his machining skills to provide special touches to some of Dottie's art, like a totem on which the creatures can revolve.
"My dad brought a Sears Roebuck lathe home when I was a kid, and I learned how to use it," Don remembers. "I grew up with machine tools and started doing serious metal work in middle age."
It's a form of art for him, and a source of joy.
"I never really liked being gainfully employed," he said with a laugh. "I could have been a 'trust baby' just fine!"
Don was born in Sacramento, Calif., and raised in Oakland, Calif. He attended Cal Poly for one year before entering the Air Force (Hondo and El Paso in Texas, and Portland, Ore.). Later he earned a degree in business from San Francisco State.
He tried the business life for five years but realized fairly quickly that he didn't like the corporate world.
"I'd have died an early death if I had stayed," he said.
So he returned to flying and spent 23 years as a pilot with TWA. It was TWA that eventually settled him in the Kansas City area, in 1964. His 35 total years of flying include time with the Air Force Reserve and the National Guard.
He's a serious photographer, too. The year 1972 found him in the Serengeti Plain, moving in and out of small dirt air strips all over Kenya, photographing animals. He enjoys flying model airplanes. And he craves time out on the roads on a bike. For years he attended an annual biker rally in Ohio, and this summer he'll be in the thick of the famous biker rendezvous in Sturgis, S.D.
Like Dottie, Don is intent on lavishing his senior years with activity and people—and he's quizzical about those who settle for less.
"I had a friend who, at age 50, decided he was 'old,'" Don said. "If you decide that, you will be. So you must have passions. And don't live in the past."
He surely doesn't, but he has the long-term future pretty well covered.
"I haven't got time to age," he said. "I have projects lined up into the next century. The grim reaper can't take me!"
Like Dottie, Don loves diversity and works hard to spice up his life.
"I try to be with people who are not like me," he said.
The diversity in his life includes Dottie. He's politically conservative; she's a liberal. He's not too concerned with spirituality; it's a center point of her life. Don's a Ducati man; Dottie favors a BMW and her pearl-colored Piaggio. Where Dottie likes to hang with artists and other people who are thinkers, Don surrounds himself with pilots, gearheads, motorcyclists, and a bunch of guys whose commonality is a love for Maker's Mark whiskey.
They have plenty in common, though. For one thing, both are hearty women's rights advocates, and they don't just preach it. It's part of their conscious interactions every hour, every day.
Mutual admiration & support
Don and Dottie began dating when she was 62, he 65. Neither was looking for a new relationship when they went out to dine one evening with some other singles. Their dinner conversation enchanted both of them, and a motorcycle ride on one of Don's bikes followed.
Of that encounter, Dottie recalls, "He was the first guy I had dated in a long time and I was nervous. I put my hands on his shoulders timidly, but that didn't feel very secure, so I put my hands around his middle. When he felt that, he reached down and patted my leg in an easygoing, supportive way. That was a seduction! I knew this was a man I could really like."
Another element of Don's "seduction" was that when Dottie told him her age, he responded, "I like older women!"
They've been deeply connected ever since. Don is vocal and articulate about how much his relationship with Dottie means to him, and how surprised he sometimes is by it.
"This relationship has lasted longer than any of my three marriages," he says with wonder.
To sustain both their affection and their independence, Dottie and Don will continue to keep their own homes.
"We need our own quiet times, our own projects, and time with our own family and friends" she said.
(Dottie has three children: Eric Pope, of Santa Fe, N.M., his wife, Jenniphr, and their two daughters, Emerson and Sydney; Jeff Pope, of Hawaii; and John Pope, of Northern California, his wife, Ursula, and their two daughters, Venice and Carson. Don has a daughter, Hillary Peterson, of Prescott, Ariz., whose husband is Dan; they have one son, Michael.)
But they spend loads of time together, and each is the other's primary support in whatever endeavors they undertake.
"We're nurturing, caring, and attentive," Don said. "We don't take the other for granted at all, yet there is an understanding that we will be there for one another if and when there is a need."
And they don't defer.
"We tell each other what we're doing," Dottie said. "We don't ask."
Says Don, "We're not together 24/7 and don't have traditional expectations, but we have made mutual commitments. We care for each other when we're sick, we travel together, we cook together, we ride together."
What's at the heart of this nontraditional partnership in what Dottie terms "our golden years—emotionally, spiritually, and creatively"?
"I think the core is speaking the truth and owning the truth," she said. "If you don't, you can't have a relationship. And we share our core values of self-respect and respect for others."
They agree that some of their success comes from having tried and tried again with different mates, having traveled the world, and remaining open to new things.
"We know and accept who we are now," Dottie said. "We love our lives."
