Dorothy Oxendine, of Farmingdale, who led Gold Star Mothers after losing son in Vietnam, dies at 99

Her son gave the last measure of devotion as a U.S. Marine when he was killed in combat in Vietnam. And Farmingdale’s Dorothy Oxendine showed devotion to other families whose service-member children were killed or missing in action, as the national president of American Gold Star Mothers.

She continued to honor those service members well into her 80s, when she was instrumental in creating a memorial garden at the Long Island National Cemetery, Pinelawn, in 2008. And, said her longtime friend, Air Force veteran Haze Gal, of upstate Ulster County, "She volunteered thousands of hours at the VA hospital in Northport." 

"Her dedication was a way to fill a void," said her daughter Barbara Oxendine Ezzo, of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. "Losing her first and only son was heartbreaking."

Yet Oxendine, who died Nov. 9 at home at age 99 of natural causes, was much more than an advocate for the families of service members lost in action. She was a pioneering female Episcopal minister. She was a deep-sea fisher who was once photographed with a 44-pound amberjack she caught off the coast of Florida. And in the 1990s, Oxendine and her husband became legal guardians to their daughter Lois’ high school-age children, Tara Sydow and Jesse Vanvorst. (Lois died in 2014.) 

"She was my safe place," said the now-grown Tara Roch, of Southampton, Massachusetts. "Their home was the only constant in my life growing up. We moved around a lot and my brother and I had a very dysfunctional home life. My grandparents took us in several times when my mom was unable to care for us. My grandmother taught me manners, life skills, to spend half and save half whenever you could and the difference between a want and a need when spending."

Even after Roch herself went into the military, the by-now widowed Oxendine extended her grace. "She helped me with my first son, Jared," Roch said. "I lived with her after getting out of the Navy. She would watch my son so I could get my degree."

Born Dorothy Marie Braun on June 25, 1926, at home on Memorial Street in Middle Village, Queens, Oxendine was the fifth of nine children of Charles J. Braun, a German-born metalworker at the Brooklyn Navy Yards, and homemaker Kathryn Kuntz Braun. Their eldest child, Margaret, had died in childhood two years before Dorothy’s birth.

Dorothy graduated from Queens’ Grover Cleveland High School in 1944. The following year she married U.S. Marine Corps veteran Willie French Oxendine Jr., a Native American from North Carolina. They moved to Farmingdale in 1950, buying the home in which the couple resided the rest of their lives. Willie Oxendine died in 1997 at age 74.

In addition to daughters Barbara and Lois, they had a son, Willie French Oxendine III. During the Vietnam War, he enlisted in the USMC as his father had during World War II. A paratrooper with the Third Battalion, 26th Marines, Private First Class Oxendine was killed by an enemy grenade while on patrol on May 30, 1968, age 21, the Defense Department said. He was posthumously awarded the Conspicuous Service Cross on June 30, 1969.

After his death, Dorothy Oxendine poured herself into helping other mothers like herself. In 1969, while working as an office manager in the medical field, she became president of the Memorial Chapter of American Gold Star Mothers. She became its national president in 2002, serving for a year. She additionally became the first female president of the Long Island National Cemetery Memorial Organization.

As an American Gold Star Mothers ambassador, she met with Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and their first ladies. And in 2005, recognizing the changing demographics of service members, she helped lead a successful movement to admit noncitizen U.S. residents who lost a child in the American military. "There’s no discrimination in a national cemetery," she told The Associated Press. "There’s no discrimination when they get killed side by side. So how can we discriminate against a mother?"

Such was the esteem in which Oxendine was held, Gal said, that she was made a member of the veterans motorcycle group Rolling Thunder. "Vietnam veterans, particularly Chapter 11 in Suffolk County and Chapter 82 in Nassau County, they called her mom," Gal added.

Outside her work for veterans’ families, Oxendine attended The George Mercer, Jr. Memorial School of Theology in Garden City to become the first female Eucharist minister at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Farmingdale, according to friends and family.

In addition to her daughter Barbara, she is survived by her sister, Dolores Braun Kilday Gratton, of Phoenix; six grandchildren; 11 great-grandchildren; and three great-great-grandchildren.

Visitation was on Nov. 16 at the Arthur F. White Funeral Home in Farmingdale. Following a funeral service the next day at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, she was buried at Long Island National Cemetery, Pinelawn. Donations may be made to Vietnam Veterans of America.