Doris Jean Marz passed away peacefully in her sleep on October 7, 2023, at her home at Regency Park Oak Knoll in Pasadena, where she spent the final decade of her life. She was 93.
She is remembered by family and friends for her great sense of humor punctuated with an infectious laugh, her Christian faith, her life of service as a nurse, her unwavering civic duty and her love of animals and people — no one was a stranger long in Doris’ presence!
Doris Jean was born to Lillian and Homer Tate on January 2, 1930, in Ontario, California. Her sweet baby sister, Dorothy, came along a year and a half later.
After spending her girlhood in Ontario, and joining a lifelong friend group called “The Gruesomes,” Doris moved to rural Hemet, where she made pets out of the farm animals in her backyard. She graduated from Hemet High School in 1947. Afterward, she returned to Ontario where she attended Chaffey College in preparation for nurses’ training. “Miss Tate” was accepted into the nursing program at Methodist Hospital downtown Los Angeles where she proudly wore the starched white hat, shoes and uniform.
In 1952, the newly pinned Nurse Doris met Frank Marz, an LAPD officer and WWII Navy veteran, through mutual friends. At that first meeting they discovered they shared not only a mutual attraction, but the same birthday, January 2. Doris and Frank were married six months later. They spent the next 60 years together.
The newlyweds soon after bought a home in Eagle Rock. They had two children together, Steve and Valerie, both of whom were born at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena. The children attended Eagle Rock High School, where Doris was an active booster of the athletics program. If raising kids and working full-time was not enough, she also cared for dogs, cats and guinea pigs in her home.
Over the years, she worked at several L.A.-area hospitals, including as a student nurse at Children’s Hospital, Georgia Street (one of the first emergency rooms in Los Angeles, located inside a police station) and Glendale Adventist. She also worked as a private duty nurse for a resident of the Huntington Hotel in Pasadena, was a geriatric nurse at a convalescent home in Eagle Rock, and worked for a doctor in Glendale. All told, she worked as a Registered Nurse for more than 40 years.
Doris enjoyed summer road trips with Frank and the kids — and dogs and a cat or two — exploring each of the Western states over the years. A few of her favorite places were Yellowstone, the California Redwoods, the rocky beaches of the Oregon coast, Zion, Grand Canyon, the Colorado Rockies, and Frank’s home state of New Mexico, where rowdy family visits and reunions with many aunts, uncles and dozens of cousins took place along Route 66 in Gallup, Milan, Cubero and Albuquerque.
After Frank retired from the LAPD in 1975, the couple moved to Big Bear Lake, returning to their small-town roots. She continued to work as an R.N. at Big Bear Hospital and St. Mary’s in Apple Valley.
In the 1980s, she joined her daughter and mother on a trip to England and Scotland. Doris later visited Washington, D.C., and Virginia with Valerie, soaking in the history on display in our nation’s capital.
After she retired from nursing and moved to the rural outskirts of Grand Junction, Colorado, she stayed active with volunteer service, including delivering Meals on Wheels to seniors. At Doris’ urging, Frank relocated raccoons that would raid his watermelon patch and corn field rather than the grim alternative. She enjoyed life on their mini farm, as she delivered Frank’s crops to neighbors, fed stray cats and set up a rabbit hutch.
To celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in 2002, Doris and Frank took a cruise to Alaska.
In 2010, Doris and Frank returned to the Pasadena area to be near their children and grandchildren.
Of the many roles Doris played in her life — nurse, daughter, wife, aunt, mother — becoming a grandmother to Matthew, Andrew and Jessica was the role she reveled in the most. The grandchildren brought smiles and lit her up, even as her own light was fading.
Doris is survived by son, Steve, and daughter-in-law, Sukanya Marz, and grandsons, Matthew and Andrew Marz; daughter, Valerie Marz, and granddaughter, Jessica Marz. She is predeceased by her husband, Frank, and her sister, Dorothy Long. She also leaves behind nieces, nephews and dozens of cousins and friends, all of whom she cherished.
Memorial services will be held on Saturday, Nov. 11, at 1:30 p.m., at Forest Lawn Glendale, Little Church of the Flowers, 1712 S. Glendale Ave., Glendale 91205. Her ashes will be interred in the Columbarium of Tenderness, Dawn of Tomorrow, next to Frank.
In lieu of flowers, donations in honor of Doris’ memory may be sent to Pasadena Humane (give.pasadenahumane.org), Alzheimer’s Association (act.alz.org) or the Convalescent Aid Society in Pasadena (convalescentaidsociety.com).
