By Robert Haddad and Angelica Buono
Long-term resident of Ormewood Park Dorothy Roberts Pirzad left our world March 6, 2025, at the home of her caregiving forever friend Robert. She lived at 931 Delaware Avenue since 1988, raising her grandchildren and participating through their early education at Anne E. West Elementary and then the Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School.
Dottie was a lifelong activist and advocate, committed to civil rights, world peace, and compassionate care for all people. She furthered her mission to help whenever and wherever she could, working for the National Council of Churches in Manhattan, where she helped organize civil rights action; she spoke truth to power as an original staff member on the Great Speckled Bird; she worked as an advocate and counselor serving and saving vets with the Vietnam Veterans Center in Atlanta; she thought globally and acted locally as both political and personal organizer with Atlanta legislators and community leaders. She opened her home and heart to welcome young people in need of shelter, healthy food, love, care, and guidance; she shepherded them and shared work at Hidden Springs Nursery (The Farm), taught them to work for others and themselves when she founded the famously innovative Dragonwyck Wax Works to craft unique and spectacular candles in Georgetown, Washington D.C., and used her creative and entrepreneurial talents feeding and nurturing minds and bodies in her paper flower art business Midtown Atlanta.
Dottie was mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother to Lisa, Lela, Nina, Angelica, Mickey, Audrey, and Welzie June. She nurtured their creativity, kindness, and curiosity about the world. Her love for family was reflected through the strong character of the children she helped raise. She made deep and meaningful connections with a family of friends all over the world who treasure her love, counsel, and legendary stories. Her life was filled with the music, art, and books that she curated and shared, and she captured the light of the people and world around her in beautiful, loving photographs. To know Dottie was to love her.
Her family will commemorate her well-lived life with a memorial Ginkgo tree planting in autumn.
