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03/08/2017 07:30 AMRemember the nursery rhyme about the woman who lived in a shoe? The one who had so many children she didn’t know what to do? That could never be Dorothy Goss. Dot had six children of her own, three foster children and, in the summer, as many as four city children who came for a few weeks in the country under the auspices of the Fresh Air Fund. But Dot knew just what to do. She was one of the organizers of the Essex Park & Recreation Department 50 years ago.
Dot, who now lives in Westbrook, will be honored as grand marshal of Essex Go Bragh, the sixth annual Essex St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Saturday, March 11. The parade will step off from Essex Town Hall at 10:30 a.m.
When Dot grew up in Essex, Town Hall was Pratt High School, where she spent one year before Valley Regional High School was built.
“It’s hard to believe that all happened 50 years ago; time passes so fast,” Dot says, as she thinks about the early days of the Park & Recreation Department.
The first activity that the department sponsored, she recalls, was taking youngsters fishing at Sunset Pond.
“Now Park & Rec, it’s just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger.”
Dot’s license plate, CT SHAD, tells you a lot about her growing up as Dot Miller in Essex. Her father had a fish market and, from the age of 14, Dot helped out by boning shad.
“I did that for more than 50 years, but I can’t do it anymore,” she says. “I’ve offered to train people on how to do it, but it’s a different society now. My father said ‘You are going to do it” and I did it.”
For the past several years, arthritis has made it too difficult for her to debone the fish.
Dot was one of the deboners in a half-hour documentary on shad fishing made in 2002 that the Connecticut River Museum still shows. Local historian Brenda Milkofsky, a trustee of the museum who works on its exhibits, recalls that Dot also taught some shad fisherman how to debone.
Dot not only had to find activities for her children, she had to support them after her marriage ended in the 1970s.
“People told me I had so many kids I could get state support, but that’s not what I wanted. I wanted to work,” she says.
She did work, first for a social service agency in Middletown, a job she got through a reporter who had written a newspaper story about her efforts establishing the Park & Recreation Department.
“I started as a clerk and by the time I left, I was personnel manager,” she says.
She followed that job with positions at the State of Connecticut, first in the Department of Housing and then with the Department of Transportation, where she was an affirmative action officer. She also worked for several property management firms and found time between work and family to take courses at Middlesex Community College.
“One of my grandsons says it’s hard to believe I’ve done so much,” she says.
Still, there are a few things she would love to do.
“I haven’t taken a cruise,” she says.
She thinks young people should be more willing, if they need work, to take jobs they might not particularly like.
“I tell them to get off their A, and take a job, even if its not what they want,” she says. “There are jobs out there.”
Dot has 27 grandchildren and 6 great-grandchildren. When asked about whether she remembers all the names, she gives a wide grin and says, “Heck no.” As a visitor asks her to smile for a picture, she confesses that she has something special she tells her grandchildren to say when posing for pictures—and it’s not cheese.
“I tell them to say ‘sex,’” she says.
Recalling the Essex of her childhood, Dot remembers the small stores on Main Street, the dances at town hall and a place where, as the saying goes, everybody knew your name. In fact, when Dot was Democratic register of voters, some 40 years ago, she says names were never a problem.
“I never had to ask anybody. I loved that, and I loved the job,” she says.
At 81, Dot no longer drives, relying on her extended family to get her around. At home, she is active on her computer, often playing games of video solitaire. She doesn’t get to Essex as much as she would like.
“I went to the Memorial Day Parade for years and everyone would say, ‘Hi, Dot, where’ve you been?” she says.
There are fewer friends these days then there once were, as she starts to count loved ones and acquaintances she has lost.
“My mother always said the older you get, the faster they go,” she says.
But she is looking forward to seeing old friends as she waves to them from the horse-drawn carriage she will be riding in as grand marshal of the parade. She’s not Irish, but on that day, she will do the appropriate Irish thing: wear green. She already has the outfit planned.
Essex St. Parick’s Day Parade
The Essex Go Bragh St. Patrick’s Day Parade led by Westbrook’s Dot Goss steps off from Essex Town Hall at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, March 11.The route goes down Main Street. The parade will be followed by a day of Irish-themed activities for all ages at businesses along Essex Main Street.