Desert Messenger

sincerity of their commitment along with chairman, Pastor Bruce Swart, helped the cemetery improvements to go forward. We received grants to pave Cemetery Road, put in an irrigation system, plant trees and create and install informational signage. All the artwork on the signage was the creative work of Dinice. She had the clairvoyant ability to project a vision and the details to make her vision a reality. She told me she would go to the dump to get bits and pieces of things that would go into some of her craft projects. She called it crafts. I called it art. In my eyes she was an astonishing artist in many different mediums. Her art was a gift I called upon frequently as projects surfaced. She was one of the founding mem- bers of the art guild. Her clairvoyance extended to her personal life. One day we were having a discussion about health care, which suddenly turned intense. She told me in clear detail how she would handle a severe disease, if or when that came up for her. It is a conversation I remember because she was quite adamant about it. She said she would seek out a physician who had a strong positive character to treat her. I had no doubt she would and did. She was prepared, way ahead of any need, to address the twists and turns of illness. Dinice had a way of coming back to the beginning of things and making a full circle. After many of the grants were completed for the cemetery, Dinice was thinking of a fundraiser to help raise funds for more cemetery improvements. She came up with a "Spirit Walk", later called a "Walk in the Past". It was a play, an interactive one, with volun- teers at various gravesites improvising the life of the person buried there. She typed brief biographies of each person buried for the volunteers to use as they created the character through improvisation. It was an astonishingly creative idea that has became an annual event. This event reflected Dinice's character of creative perception and love of history in a way that brought it to life that everyone could experience. The last time I saw Dinice was on a street in Parker. She was in the middle of her illness then and we didn't discuss it. We discussed one of her signs at the cemetery that was destroyed in the storm. She planned to recreate it. Her illness had other plans. In the years we worked together, I trusted her to come to a project, make a plan and work her plan, and ultimately create magic, and she never failed to do so. All of us who worked with her knew that about her. We did so many projects. Every summer Dinice worked in the library meeting room. She would push all the tables together and use huge rolls of butcher paper, create her designs and make them real. All the signage in the cemetery was hers, so was the museum signage, and a museum display of the pioneer family history, the sign across the town hall park- ing lot honoring all the donors of trees was hers also. Dinice was so much more than a library clerk and cemetery record- keeper. She balanced all that she did for the Town with the time she and her husband Doug had together. Her art and her relationship with Doug were all part of the heart of Dinice. As private as she was, she left a lot of her right here, in Quartzsite. I doubt seriously that she is resting and peace. I believe she is still dreaming of projects and of Doug and all the times they had together. I can still picture her in the library meeting room working around the tables with large pieces of butcher paper, to- tally focused and in her own personal heaven or out on ATV trails enjoy- ing the desert with Doug; coming full circle once again in an ever upward spiral of personal growth and magic. 4 www.DesertMessenger.com June 12, 2019 T��� ����� ������� �� D����� M�������� By Alex Taft I met Dinice when she applied for a library clerk position. During the interview I explained to her that the job also included conducting a summer reading program for children for at least her first year as library clerk. I offered her the job on those conditions and she agreed. I expected her to follow the state library program. Instead she used the reading program stories to help the children write a play, design costumes and scenery and then cre- ate invitations for their parents to see their play. Dairy Queen donated ice cream for the event and the parents loved the performance. The summer program was a huge success because of Dinice's fearless creativity. After that experience, I never left her alone to just be a library clerk. Creative projects that cried out for Dinice's creative passion kept surfacing. Around the same time, the Quartzsite Improvement Association membership decided that maintaining the cemetery was too much to do. It was really hard for them to manage summer burials since most members were winter visitors, so they voted to give the cemetery to the Town. They brought a two-feet by four -feet box of papers, maps and receipts to the library and their BLM lease. I handled the lease transfer paperwork and gave the box to Dinice, with profuse apologies and told her to take her time sorting through it. The rest is history. It became her mission and as with everything she tackled, she brought her creative pas- sion to the task. It took over a year. During that time the cemetery lease was transferred and the Hi Jolly Cemetery Board was formed. We were lucky to have members of the pioneer families of the Scotts and the Cowells as board members. The Remembering Dinice Ross 585 N. Central Quartzsite Open Mon-Fri 8-5 928-927-8787 Johnny DelPino, Owner BEST AUTO RV & TRUCK REPAIR SERVICE YOU CAN DEPEND ON!

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