Dorothy Nye

Our Mother, Dorothy Nye, 81, died peacefully Sept. 20, 2020, at the Pikes Peak Care Center in Colorado Springs, CO, after years spent with crippling dementia.

Dorothy was born Sept. 21, 1938, in Maine, but she was raised alongside her two brothers on the plains of Dakota by their mother, Miranda Nye. In 1955 she graduated Fairdale High School and was married that same year to our Father, Joseph Westby. Together with their ever-increasing offspring, they lived in various North Dakota cities before finally settling in Valley City for many years. After 1981 Dorothy moved to Montana, then subsequently to various spots across Colorado.

Among her many roles she was a mother, secretary, Girl Scout leader, master at the art of baking, and lastly a high school English teacher during her later years in Colorado.

She was a complicated and often isolated individual, and yet she cared enough to instill in us ideas of physical fitness and health, consideration for the natural environment, and many ideas that felt at the time to be both strange and quite forward-thinking for a woman of mostly rural North Dakota. The majority of her mature years were spent alone.

She is survived by her children Pamela Westby, Colorado Springs, CO; Lisa Peltier (Dan), Valley City, ND; Thomas Westby, Colorado Springs, CO; Theodore

Westby, Smyrna, GA; and Erik Westby (Shawn Murphy Miller), Walnut Creek, CA; 10 grandchildren, and two brothers, Robert Nye, Reno, NV; and David Nye, East Andover, NH.

Dorothy was preceded in death by her son Timothy Westby.