Dorothy Alena (Fehrenbacher) Kovacic, 99, passed away on Monday, July 16, 2018, in La Mesa, California, of congestive heart failure and other ailments of old age.

Born Aileen Dorothy Fehrenbacher (and known as Dot) in South Muddy, Jasper County, Illinois, the fifth of eight children to Charles and Elizabeth (Drewes) Fehrenbacher, she grew up on a dairy farm in southern Illinois.

Dorothy was a modern liberated woman, way ahead of her time. After completing high school, she attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduating in 3 years with a Bachelor s degree in home economics. She also studied journalism, fashion design, and art, all of which she pursued throughout her life.

After college, she moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she worked at the Art Institute of Chicago, helping to establish the Thorne Miniature Rooms, famous to this day. While in Chicago, she took flight lessons in bi-planes. Due to the effects of the Depression on her family, she returned to southern Illinois to teach high school and to assist her parents and younger siblings.

While on a return visit to the University of Illinois in 1945, she met her future husband, Peter Kovacic, who was earning a Ph.D. in organic chemistry. They were married on June 29, 1946, in Baltimore, Maryland. Their first apartment was in Boston, Massachusetts, where Dorothy worked as a secretary at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), while Dr. Kovacic undertook post-graduate studies there. In 1947 their first child Lynn Celeste Kovacic was born. Shortly after, they moved to New York City, where Dr. Kovacic taught and did additional post-graduate work at Columbia University.

In 1948 they moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where Dr. Kovacic was employed at Dupont. Their first home was an apartment, but after a year they rented a home in Cranston Heights, where Dorothy created the first of her many gardens. Three sons were born in Wilmington: Jan Peter Kovacic, in 1948, Paul Leonard Kovacic, in 1951, and Don Steven Kovacic, in 1953.

IIn 1955 Dorothy and Peter were in the process of designing and building their own split-level home, when Dr. Kovacic accepted a position in academia at Case Institute of Technology (later Case Western Reserve University), in Cleveland, Ohio, and the family moved to Gates Mills, Ohio. Two other sons were born in Ohio: Eric Dorson Kovacic, in 1959, and Ken Alan Kovacic, in 1966. The grounds of their home in Gates Mills became a veritable Garden of Eden under Dorothy s green thumb, with vegetable gardens, fruit trees, a stream, and grassy lawns used as sports fields.

In 1968, Prof. Kovacic was hired to establish a graduate research program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the family moved to Fox Point, Wisconsin, where Dorothy and Peter retained their home until 2008. Here Dorothy allowed the grounds to go to seed, literally, to create expanses of wild flowers throughout the lawns and woods.

Dorothy and Peter traveled extensively in later years after Dr. Kovacic retired, while he continued to teach and conduct research at numerous universities throughout the United States and internationally.

From 1989 through 1998 they had a second home in Concord, California, where Dr. Kovacic taught at St. Mary s College, in Moraga, California. From 1998 to the present they had another second home at San Diego Country Estates, in Ramona, California, where Dr. Kovacic taught and continues to research and publish articles on medicinal chemistry at San Diego State University, and where Dorothy continued to tend her gardens, living independently until only a few months before her death.

Dorothy Kovacic was a Renaissance woman: housewife, mother, teacher, artist, writer, gardener, dietician, and humanitarian. She was married to Peter for over 72 years and raised 6 children. She believed in self-development and encouraged all to become educated and accomplished. She taught all her children to read before kindergarten, to experience the joy and discipline of music, and to learn all aspects of homemaking. She exercised strict parental controls on toys and television in its early days. She created and maintained gardens everywhere she lived. She designed and made clothes for all her children. She prepared meals of great diversity before diverse diets were determined to be healthy, and she rarely ate out. She followed current affairs her entire life and participated in social and political movements that she believed in passionately. She advocated healthy living on all dimensions. She lived a fiercely independent pioneer life.

Dorothy is survived by her husband, Dr. Peter Kovacic, her daughter Lynn Dennison, and her sons Jan, Don, and Ken. Her children Paul and Eric and all her siblings predeceased her. She is survived by numerous grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren, of whom she was very proud. She charmed people everywhere she went, even to the end of her life.

Dorothy will be cremated, and her ashes will be placed at the Peter and Dorothy Kovacic Family memorial stone, at the Cottage Grove Cemetery in Dane County, Wisconsin (outside Madison), where their son Paul is buried.

In accordance with her wishes, there will be no scheduled ceremony or service.

Published in Legacy on Aug. 2, 2018.