Sunlight always seems to shine on Doris-Ann Clough. If you spend any time in Wolfeboro you’ve probably seen her walking, flamboyantly gesturing, lecturing a jay-walker or unsuspecting tourist driving the wrong way down a one-way street.
Born in 1935, she’s logged roughly 127,750 miles by foot through rain, sleet, snow, whether it’s 95F degrees or-20F. For the past 30 years, she’s worked at the Wolfeboro laundromat in the morning and if something needs doing she’s up and at it. She could probably tell you every sidewalk crack and slightest nuance in her travels through town and you’d think the story would end there…
Doris-Ann doesn’t have any children of her own but she has many children in her heart. At her home on Lehner St., abutting carpenter school, she’s cared for dozens of boys and girls and she remembers them all by name and their individual personalities.
I stopped to see her this morning outside her home and she insisted that i come in for a visit. It’s been 30 years, but she reminds me often how she taught me to tie my shoes. The walls and tables adorn all the little faces of her past. The one that she still holds most tightly is a young girl that died back in 1968 at the age of 14 of Cystic Fibrosis, Mary Anne Soucey, and to her, it seems almost like yesterday. She has a large painted portrait of Mary Anne on her living room wall, and in the kitchen, a color by number cat hanging by the front door. Whatever your faith or spirituality, there’s a special place for people like Doris-Anne Clough.
Doris Anne Clough.
thank you for this. doris-ann is a treasure. i remember the house fondly from my childhood. my friends and i spent many hours there playing chinese checkers and i spy with she & her mother. we also picked milkweed pods along the path outside the house. happy, simple times.