By MIKE WILSON St. Petersburg Times 11/29/1995
ST. PETERSBURG — On Tuesday morning, the viewing room at Memorial Park Funeral Home bloomed with the bright colors of sorrow: pink carnations, red daisies, white baby’s breath, yellow lamplight, shiny-blue casket.
Even the deceased seemed to glow. Her feathery yellow-white hair had been gathered in a tight bun and placed on her head like a golden crown. Her cheekbones shone pink like a baby’s. Her skin was a warm bronze.
Just before 11 a.m., an old woman was led slowly into the viewing room. She held a black cane in one hand and a white-jacketed King James Bible in the other. Growing from the pages of the Bible was a tiny pink rose.
The old woman approached the casket and rested her hand on the rail. Inside, she saw her best friend. Inside, she saw her lifelong companion.
Inside, she saw herself.
“You don’t know how pretty she used to be,” the old woman said.
Then she placed the rose on her twin sister’s breast.
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Lovey and Dovey Dowdle spent their whole lives together, 93 years. Ninety-four if you count the months they spent in the womb, and Dovey certainly does.
Whatever one sister did, the other did, too. They taught school, worked for the government, joined the Daughters of the American Revolution, sang in unison from the United Methodist Hymnal. They spent their last 35 years together in a wood-frame house in the Kenwood area of St. Petersburg, where they made 12-egg cakes and raised turnip greens next to the garage. The sisters never married because they were enough for each other.
Now death has done what no man ever could. Lovey Dowdle died last week, and on Tuesday Dovey buried her. No other Dowdles attended the funeral because there are no other Dowdles. Dovey is the last one. For the first time in her life, she is alone.
Well, not completely. The people from Neighborly Senior Services come every day to dress and bathe and feed her. They work hard to give her a good life.
Dovey isn’t interested. With Lovey gone, she said, she feels half-dead. It is not a bad feeling.
“I have no fear in the world,” Dovey said. “My pleasure will be to go and be with my family.”
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The Dowdle twins were born 10 minutes apart on March 20, 1902. Their parents named them Lovey Dentriss Dowdle and Dovey Lentriss Dowdle. Other children made fun of Lovey and Dovey, but they did not mind.
“God gave us this congenial disposition, so we dealt with the names better than other people would,” Dovey said. The twins also had a brother, Winston, who died several years ago, and a sister, Dorsey. Dorsey lived with her sisters in St. Petersburg until her death in January 1994. She was 87.
The twins grew up mostly in Pickins County, Ala., where their father, Luther, had settled in the late 1800s. Luther Dowdle was a true patriot. According to Dovey, he would not let his children sit down to eat until they had read a chapter from the Bible and recited part of the Declaration of Independence.
The twins taught school in Alabama in the 1920s. Later, Lovey and Dorsey took government jobs in Oak Ridge, Tenn., while Dovey worked in Montgomery, Ala. Dovey said the sisters corresponded so often it felt as if they were never apart.
The twins retired to St. Petersburg in 1960, and Dorsey joined them a short time later.
Dovey said she and Lovey had only one fight in their whole lives. The source was their middle names. Lovey wanted to be Lovey Lentriss instead of Lovey Dentriss because she thought it sounded better. Dovey did not want to share her middle name, but Lovey used it anyway.
“I think she finally decided that I could have my name back,” Dovey said.
In recent years, the twins’ age began to show. Dovey insisted that people were breaking into the house and stealing things, but there was no evidence of that.
“They did just fine until they lost Dorsey,” said Martha Clements, a neighbor. “The first one really threw them for a loop. I really think they missed that first sister.”
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For Lovey’s funeral, Dovey wore a brown pinstripe suit, a pink scarf, a white hat and off-white shoes. Ann Seaver of Neighborly Senior Services helped her get dressed. At 10 a.m., a man arrived in a Lincoln Town Car to drive Dovey to the funeral. During the ride she talked about Lovey.
“People always said I had a little more sense. She believed everybody and loved everybody. But I always knew when something was wrong,” she said.
Dovey was asked if she and Lovey were identical twins. “Not exactly,” she said.
“Lovey was always the prettier one. I was the ugly duckling. Somehow, I reckon, I accepted it. When we went walking together, everybody would stare at her.
“And she was just as fine in character as she was beautiful.”
In the viewing room, a big wreath of flowers stood next to the open casket. The ribbon said, “Dearest Sister.”
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The Rev. Raymond Van Der Veer, a retired Baptist pastor hired by the funeral home, conducted the service. In attendance were Dovey, a funeral home employee and Ann Seaver and Patty Mayhood of Neighborly Senior Services.
Van Der Veer has a deep, soothing voice, the kind of voice with which you would like to be commended to heaven. He said Lovey’s body is being put aside “to await the resurrection” and added that mortal life “has its purpose but is not the end.”
Van Der Veer summed up the family history, using such phrases as “I rather imagine” and “apparently” because he really did not know the Dowdle sisters, even though this was the second one he had eulogized.
After the service, he told Dovey, “You have much to treasure in your heritage.”
“Thank you for the beautiful message,” she said.
Then Dovey approached the casket once more. Everyone stood back as she spoke to Lovey. She said again how beautiful Lovey had been and how patriotic their parents had been and how much she had enjoyed Lovey’s company.
Then she said, “We’ll always be Lovey and Dovey together. We’re side by side still. It won’t be but a very short time until we’re together.
“Goodbye, darling.”
Later, at home, Dovey sank into a couch and sighed heavily. Across the room hung a painted landscape. Tucked into a corner of the frame was a piece of paper bearing Lovey’s phone number at the hospital.
Ann Seaver offered Dovey a lunch of chili, rice and peas.
“I’m not hungry,” Dovey said. “I’ll just drink some milk mostly now, I believe.”
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