BY ALBERT AMATEAU | Trying desperately to find a phone number for a Chelsea activist to interview for an obituary, it suddenly occurred to the obituary writer, “Of course, Doris Corrigan will know.” But alas, it was Doris whose obituary I was writing.
She was the person to go to in Chelsea for neighborhood advocacy, progressive causes and Reform Democratic Party organization over the past 40 years. She was there at the founding of the Chelsea Waterside Park Association. She was president of the Chelsea Reform Democratic Club, and fought to promote affordable housing and to defeat the plan for a football stadium on the West Side.
It’s hard to accept that she is gone.
Mae Doris Corrigan died July 23 in the Amsterdam Nursing Home where she had been a patient for several months. She was 87.
Her health began to deteriorate in 2011 when she was hospitalized after a fall, said Laura Morrison, a community liaison for state Senator Brad Hoylman and an old friend of Doris’s.
Morrison and Tom Schuler, a former Democratic district leader for Chelsea, would visit Doris in her W. 20th St. apartment, and take care of her grocery shopping and medication regimen. Together with Steven Skyles-Mulligan, current Democratic district leader for Chelsea, they made it possible for Doris to remain in her Chelsea apartment for as long as possible, and found her the nursing home on W. 112th St. where she spent her final months.
Mae Doris Clark was raised in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and went to Wayne University in Detroit. She moved east and married Frank Corrigan, a journalist. Although they had been separated for a while, Doris became his full-time caregiver when he became seriously ill. He died in 1982.
“There are Clarks in my family. I used to tease Doris and say that we were related,” said Schuler.
“I first met Doris on a June day in 1976 when she arrived at our West 200 Block Association fair,” recalled Pamela Wolff, of the Chelsea West 200 Block Association. “A tiny figure in a pink sunbonnet, she asked how she could help. I assigned her to the flea-market table, which she took over with typical zeal, and sold just about everything we had,” Wolff said.
Wolff recalled that several years ago she had been sheltering a little orange cat left to her by a homeless man. Wolff asked Doris, whose old gray cat had just died, to foster the orange cat for a while. The fostering became permanent and the cat, Sunshine, remained Doris’s familiar until it died years later.
“Doris had a trained cat named Sunshine, who I believe once scratched someone for not paying sufficient attention at a meeting in her apartment,” quipped Donathan Salkaln of the Chelsea Reform club and secretary of the Chelsea Waterside Park Association.
Robert Trentlyon, former publisher of the Chelsea-Clinton News and founder of the waterside park association, said he couldn’t recall when he first met Doris.
“She was just there, at meetings of the Chelsea Reform club, at the first meeting of the waterside park association in 1982,” he said. “She was always dependable and then indispensable. She came to the Chelsea-Clinton News office on 24th St. in the late 1970s after she lost an advertising job somewhere. I gave her a clerical job at first and she soon learned how to lay out ads. She took care of the details in everything she did.”
“She was famous for her short stature [just under 5 feet] and a short temper that went with it,” said Kathy Kinsella, former president of the Chelsea reform club. “She was impatient at times, yet a very thorough teacher. She was our go-to person who knew everything and got it all done. Fierce and forceful, kind and generous, Doris will always be with me. I am so thankful for all that she taught me and all that we shared,” Kinsella said.
“Doris was Chelsea,” said Corey Johnson, the District 3 city councilmember. “She was involved in every community win and every battle over the last generation. Chelsea will miss her deeply, but we will never forget the impact she made on our lives.”
“I knew and worked with Doris for over 30 years,” said Assemblymember Richard Gottfried. “In everything she did, whether service on Community Board 4, or as president of the Chelsea Reform Democratic Club, and later as Chelsea’s Democratic district leader and then Democratic State Committee member, Doris Corrigan was always forceful and energetic and fought for what she believed,” Gottfried said.
A memorial for Doris Corrigan will be held Sun., Oct. 4, from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Hudson Guild, 443 W. 26th St.
