Pro football players include Erling ‘Dinger’ Doane

Dinger Doane is featured on the website, Oldest Living Pro Football players.

His story takes a strange twist after a 1928 jaunt in a car. Apparently, heavy drinking led to a car accident which sustained Doane minor injuries. His friend, however, landed in the hospital with a broken leg.

The friend had a further unfortunate incident when he attempted to get a peek at his leg by lighting a match. The match lit up the whole room when his leg splints caught fire.

BIO: Kenneth M. Doane, President of the Doane Family Association of America, Inc.

Kenneth M. Doane, of Vancouver, WA has spent all but seven years of his life in Washington State, a far cry from Plymouth where his ancestor Deacon John Doane landed in 1630.

Kenneth was the second child of Kenneth Irving and Nora O. Doane and grew up on Whiskey Ridge on the outskirts of Marysville, Washington.

“My interest in genealogy began at a very young age when I first attended grade school,” says Kenneth M. Doane. “The teacher asked the question, ‘where did your ancestors come from?’ My fellow first graders answered the question with England or Norway or Sweden (never a combination of the two), and a couple other places that I cannot remember. For me the answer was, ‘I do not know, but I will ask and tell you tomorrow.’”

That evening he got an answer, but it didn’t necessarily assuage his full curiosity.

“My parents laughed when I asked them where we came from. They told me, ‘Well, let us see, there is English, Scottish, Irish, Canadian, maybe Dutch, Italian, and there could be others also, so you should just tell them you are an American.’ So from then on, I was just an American.”

Doane is educated, married and raises family in Washington State

In 1952 Doane graduated from Marysville High School in Marysville, Wash., enrolled in Everett Community College in Everett Wash.,and met an elegant red-head in chemistry class – Wilma Armstrong, a graduate of Battle Ground High School, Battle Ground, Wash. Kenneth earned his A.A. degree, married Wilma in 1954, went on to study civil engineering at the University of Washington. After their first child was born, the couple moved to Vancouver, Wash. and two more children would follow. Doane was highly involved in his community participating in Jay-Cees and other volunteer groups and in 1968 he was awarded Vancouver Junior First Citizen of the Year for his many civic and church volunteer activities.

A few twists and turns took the family north to Bellingham, Wash., south into Oregon where they lived in Grants Pass, McMinnville, Warrenton and eventually Portland. In 1975, Kenneth M. Doane’s career brought him back to Vancouver where he became President and Manager of Land Title Company of Clark County, Washington. He was an avid member of the Rotary Club of Vancouver and served as President of the Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce. In 1999, he retired as the Clark County branch manager for Transnation Title Insurance Company.

That interest about where his family came from, however, never waned and he decided to pursue it wholeheartedlly. Doane’s research proved he was related to a 163- Plymouth Colony immigrant Deacon John Doane.

The Deacon has been a source of first class sleuthing and some head scratching for almost 150 years as many in the Doane family have sought to discover the origins of the man who established the present day family.

Non-profit started to formalize genealogy research

In fact, the Doane family is so serious about their research efforts that they began meeting as early as the mid-1800s, and although it was a friendly family picnic, of which pictures exist in the archives of Doane College, their mission has been a straight drive down a bumpy road of incredible discovery and dashed hopes as the family has, so far unsuccessfully, attempted to jump their genealogy over the Atlantic Ocean to England, where the Deacon is believed to have been born.

In July of this year, the family met for the 52nd time. Their biennial reunions are officially organized by a nonprofit, the Doane Family Association of Amercia, Inc., and usually occur in a venue that is of some significance to the Doane Family. Those venues are easily located as Doanes have had an impact on many places.

Doanes have established Doane College, Doane Academy, built Doane Trucks, invented Doan’s pills, created Doane Paper, held positions in government, news, entertainment, manufacturing, et. al., and always gathered around the family table – a picnic table in the summer for joyous – all across the country.

The picnic reunions grew into a nonprofit and today 965 members belong and contribute to the 501(c)(3) which administers two college scholarship funds. One fund awards educational dollars to descendants of Deacon John Doane, and the other is open to general students attending Doane College in Crete Nebraska – one of the top 50 Midwestern colleges as ranked by Forbes.com.

Doane Family Association chooses new leader

This year the ultimate historic reunion event took place in Plymouth, MA. The association provided historic tours of New England. Attendees visited Doane Rock – the largest ice-carried boulder on Cape Cod, wandered through the brush at the Deacon’s homestead, ate chowder, and elected a new president – Kenneth M. Doane.

What will Kenneth M. Doane do now that he’s running a national organization? Well, he’ll raise money to grow the college scholarship fund, publish a third volume in the family’s history, and administer the family’s DNA project, a joint program with Family Tree DNA.

“Through the DNA project, and other research that has become available online, we want to pursue the identification of Deacon John Doane’s parents who we believe came from England,” said President Kenneth M. Doane, still pursuing that first-grader’s interest in his family’s origins.

The Doane Family Association of America, Inc. is very inclusive, says Kenneth M. Doane. It welcomes those with surnames of Doane, Doan, Done, Donne, variations thereof, their spouses and descendants – as well as anyone interested in the family’s history which encompasses the notorious Doan Outlaws of Bucks County Pennsylvania which were featured on a segment of PBS’s History Detectives.

And that’s a (Saran™) wrap

The next national reunion will feature more historic tours, the latest on their genetic research, history presentations, family updates and lots of pictures. It will be held July 2014 in Michigan where the family will visit Dow Chemical and learn how a Doan brought Saran™ Wrap to life to keep our food fresh.

More information
National organization www.doanefamilyassociation.org

We’d like to tell your family’s story. Contact us to set up an interview, doanefamilyassociation@gmail.com.

Timeline of The Doane Family Association

The Doane Family

1868 — The Doane Family held it first recorded reunion. Like most reunions of that time, it was a “come and bring a basket lunch and spend a day with your relations.”

1869 — The Doanes erected a memorial stone on the site of Deacon John Doane’s house at Eastham, MA. That site, overlooking Nauset Bay, is now a part of the Cape Cod National Seashore.

1906 — A perpetual lot in the Old Town Cove burial ground, including the grave site of Deacon Daniel Doane, a son, was set aside.

1907 — A memorial stone with a bronze tablet honoring Deacon John Doane was erected and a booklet was published. The Doane Family Association has held reunions on a biennial basis since 1907.

1911 — The Doane Family Association constitution was written and adopted.

1936 — On April 20, 1936 the Doane Family Association of America was incorporated under the laws of the State of New Jersey.

1975 — The third edition of The Doane Family, Volume I was printed and Volume II was created.

1980 — The Doane Family Foundation was created with Doane College to support Doane scholars and other worthy projects.

1984 — The first truly international reunion was held in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

1994 — A granite stone and bronze marker commemorating the 350th anniversary of the founding of Nauset was dedicated at the Deacon John Doane home site.

2008 — The Doane Family Foundation established a second scholarship program for Doane family members attending other institutions.

2009 — The Foundation became a 501(c)3 corporation eligible for tax free contributions.

2010 — The Doane Family Association introduced a new logo.

Government relations manager Danielle Doane educates Congress

Danielle Doane, Director of Government Studies and a David L. Coffey Fellow in Government Studies is the principal organizer of The Heritage Foundation’s Conservative Members Retreat, an annual gathering on policy issues attended by some of the top thinkers in the country as well as dozens of conservative members of Congress. She also organizes the bi-annual “new member orientation” for newly elected U.S. representatives and senators.

Danielle Doane holds a master’s degree in international management from the University of Maryland and received her bachelor’s degree in international relations from Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla.

Her husband, Adam Thierer, is a senior research fellow at Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Arlington, Va and blogs for Forbes.com. They have two children and reside in McLean, Va.

Read Danielle Doane’s commentary on the bill Congress passed aimed at reducing energy consumption: Illuminating incident

Understanding genealogy through DNA analysis by John Thompson

By John Thompson

The good news is that your entire family history is stored securely and unambiguously in your DNA.

The bad news?

It’s not so easy to decipher, and DNA covers only the identities of your ancestors, omitting all other details on their lives. In the near future, genealogists can expect in depth information from DNA, but to understand this, a little knowledge of genetics is required (but not much).

Of the three billion positions in human DNA, any pair of unrelated people has exactly the same DNA sequence at about 99.8% of those three billion positions. Related individuals have an even higher level of identity. Close family relations can be confirmed by comparing the DNA sequence at positions that tend to vary more often than average. The differences can be either in the sequence of DNA present or its length.

It is relatively easy to determine identity — such as in forensics, or very close relationships such as those determining paternity. However, it becomes progressively more difficult to analyze more distant relationships.

Embedded in nearly all the cells in the body each person has 23 pairs of chromosomes with one of each pair contributed by the mother and one pair by the father. Of these 23 pairs, 22 are virtually identical. One of the pairs is the sex chromosome. Each individual gets one X from their mother and either an X or a Y from their father. Thus, the sex chromosome in the individual is either XX (female) or XY (male). In addition, most cells have hundreds of copies of mitochondrial DNA that is much shorter than the chromosomal DNA and comes only from the mother.

If the DNA behaved itself and tracked nicely from one generation to the next, molecular genealogy would be easy. There are changes in the DNA, however, in every generation. (If you think transcribing census records is touchy, try getting 3,000,000,000 base pairs of DNA right every time.)

The individual chromosomes in the pairs also recombine with each other, mixing up the parents’ contributions in each generation. Thus, each of your great-grandparents supplied one-eighth of your DNA, but their contributions are scattered throughout all of your chromosomes and not so easy to track, especially since each of your great-grandparents was 99.8% identical to the others to begin with!

There are a couple of special cases that are easier to deal with. The simplest DNA to look at is the mitochondrial DNA (from only the mother) and the Y specific DNA (from only the father). More has been done with mitochondrial DNA because it is easier to work with. It is much shorter and there are many more copies of it, but it can only be used to trace maternal lineages. If you and the person of interest share the same mitochondrial DNA sequence, you must have the same maternal ancestor some generations back.

Not enough has been done to know how much identity is needed to prove common ancestry because, as mentioned earlier, DNA sequence changes slowly as you travers generations. A very detailed account of how this type of information was used to identity century-old bones is presented in The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, by Robert Massie.

Y-specific DNA can be used to trace paternal lineages. Since the mother does not have a Y chromosome, the father’s contribution remains “pure.” One good example of using Y DNA was confirmation of a relation between Thomas Jefferson and the offspring of Sally Hemings (see the scientific journal NATURE, Volume 396, p. 27).

It is important to note that in both the Romanovs and Jefferson/Hemings examples, DNA alone was not used to prove a genealogical relationship. A lot of research went into documenting historical data and providing a specific hypothesis that was then put ot the DNA test. It is likely that this will remain the predominant use of the technology for the foreseeable future.

The use of DNA to establish broader ethnic/national heritage relationshiops is more doable in the near future, but the quality of the connections is highly dependent on well documented populations that are needed as a reference.

For more information about DNA, the human genome project, and related topcis, visit these sites:

The Guide to Understanding Genetics by the National Institute of Health

Basic and Applied Genetic Research from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory

To contact John Thompson (email).

Originally printed in the DFA…. Edited by Carol Doane.

Beth Doane featured on TedX and Mother Nature Network

Beth Doane, speaker, author, activist, fashion designer and writer fights for the places and people who can’t fight for themselves according to the article on Mother Nature Network. She founded RainTees, which currently works in over thirty countries. She also launched a pen-pal program connecting fans with at-risk youth around the world in need of support.

Read the article about Beth Doane:

Get inspired: Passionate rain forest activist Beth Doane

 
 

Beth Doane also made a TedX talk on creating a sustainable future:

Our consumer culture often exploits impoverished countries while perpetuating mass destruction of our natural resources. In this powerful and incredibly informative speech Beth shares the life changing challenges she faced creating an ethical product and her time working on the largest environmental court case in history occurring in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Northwest writer Melanie Sherman meets a hog riding Doane

It is surprising how very little I know.

With every page written in my current manuscript, more research is necessary. And it is a contemporary romance, so what is there not to know? I mean, really, I didn’t get to be my age — with a daughter — without learning the mechanics of romance, right? But every moment of one’s life is not necessarily involved with romance, in real life or within a novel. It is those pesky little interludes of non-romance that are forcing me to research.

Now that I’ve learned about the “I’m a writer…” opening line, I’m getting better at snagging the little details I may, or may not, include in the book.

For instance, I walked into the local Harley Davidson store recently and cornered a salesman.

“I’m a writer,” I said, and paused to let the enormity of those three stunning words sink into the consciousness of the salesman. He sprouted an orange name tag bearing the name Chris Doane. “And my character is 71 years old, rich, and he wants a Harley Davidson. So, think of me as being that man. I want to buy a Harley. What will be your response?”

Chris Doane, a young man in his thirties, with short brown hair and no noticeable tattoos, hesitated a moment before jumping into the land of ‘what if.’ “Do you have a motorcycle endorsement?” he asked.

“No.”

“Do you ride motorcycles?”

“No.”

“Then I suggest you take this motorcycle safety class.” He pointed to an advertisement on the counter for Southwest Washington Motorcycle Safety. “Once you pass that, you don’t have to take the driver’s test for the endorsement. You just hand your ‘pass’ slip from the class over to the DMV.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “I don’t want to do that. I just want to buy the motorcycle.”

Chris lowered his voice, and cocked an eyebrow. “How do you plan to get it home? Did you want someone here to drive it?”

I jutted my chin. “I can’t ride it home?”

He ignored the question. “Would you like me to put it in my trailer and drive it to your house?”

I smiled. “Yes, that would be very nice. Thank you.” I walked over to a row of smaller machines. “Which one of these would you recommend, and money is no object.”

Now both eyebrows shot up. “Money is no object?” he asked.

I narrowed my eyes. “It is fiction.”

“Oh, that’s right. Okay, well, how tall are you?”

“Does it matter?” I figured if I could touch the ground while astride the bike, everything would be gravy.

“Yes. You have to reach the pegs for your feet.”

“Oh,” I said. I ran my gaze up and down the salesman. “How tall are you?”

He shot me a grin. “I’m 5’11” but I’d tell you six feet.”

I nodded. If asked my weight, I’d shave off twenty-five pounds — if I were female, but right now I was a male. “Yeah, okay, I’m six feet. Really.”

“Okay, then.” Chris patted the handle bar of one of the motorcycles. “This one here…” He squinted at me. “Are you planning to ride this on the road, or off-road?”

How would I know what the character in my book planned? I hadn’t written it yet. But not wanting to limit the potential, I hauled in a breath and gave the salesman a smirk. “Maybe I’ll want to do both.”

“Then get a Kawasaki.”

My mouth dropped open. “I want a Harley,” I demanded.

“You don’t know how to ride, you don’t want to take the safety course, and you might ride off-road. You need to get an entry level Kawasaki, or some small bike, about 250cc, and ride it for six months. If you still want a Harley after that, come back.”

I couldn’t believe how rude he was being to my character. How would my character handle this? “But I want a Harley, and I want it now, and I’ll pay cash.”

He placed his hands on his hips. “Look, you lay a Kawasaki down and you can pick it up and keep going. You lay one of these bikes down and it’ll be fifteen hundred to three thousand bucks to repair it. These are not dirt bikes. They are Harleys,” he said, as if this explained everything. He pointed to a shiny chromed plate on the side. “This right here is going to cost bucks if you lay it down.”

I thought about telling him I had the money to repair it, but then I realized it wasn’t about the money. It was about the horror of someone being callus enough to allow a Hog to get injured. “Look,” my character stood his ground, “I want to get a bike today. I’ll worry about driving it later. What one are you going to sell me?”

He sighed, and scrutinized me. “Are you pretty buff?”

Dear Lord. “Um…no.” I could feel the heat wash over my face. “I’m seventy-one, and have spent my life running a very large company.”

He snorted. “Fine. I’d recommend this little bike here. It is about 500 pounds. Probably be okay for you.” He pointed to a Sportster.

A huge man, whose sleeveless t-shirt exposed multiple tattoos down both arms, shook his head and sent his long hair flying. “Center of gravity is too high on that bike. You want the Road King,” he interjected.

Chris showed me the Road King, but it was 800 pounds and my character worried he might not be able to pick it up if he put it down. I pointed to the Sportster. “Okay, I’ll take it. What about helmets and jackets and stuff.”

He led me over to some helmets and expounded upon all the safety features. I decided on a full, wrap-around helmet. After all, my character is obnoxious, but not stupid. Then he lead me over to the women’s’ jackets. He pulled out a pink leather one.

“Now, this jacket is cute, but it shouldn’t be worn for riding. There is no protection.” He pulled out another jacket with some colorful leather trim. “This one is still cute, but has protection–”

“Why are you showing me women’s jackets?”

He laughed. “Oh yeah. Forgot.” We strolled over to the men’s section and I picked out a top-of-the-line jacket before he turned to the boots section. “If you do end up going to the safety class, which I really recommend, then you can’t wear shoes like this.” He held up his foot sporting a gray running shoe. “You have to have a boot that covers at least the ankle.”

“Hmmm, I don’t know. I don’t want those big ones that go to the knee. I wear expensive Italian leather loafers.”

“Follow me. I’ll show you what I wear.”

I had to jog to keep up with his “six foot” frame as we rushed through the store, and down a hall past an “Employees only” sign. He unlocked a door and we stepped inside an office. He showed me his gear, all very nice, but my character wasn’t really interested in boots with a metal strip on the side for scraping on the pavement when leaning into a curve. My character didn’t think he’d be going that fast.

Chris also showed me a few antique Harleys in the back of the store. In all, I was there over an hour. How much of the info he gave me will end up in my book? I don’t know. Maybe only a line or two, but at least I know something about the subject now.

They say you should write what you know, after all.

Editors note: Melanie Sherman is an award winning writer. This article is republished with permission and was originally published on her blog, Meanderings of Melanie, under the title Things a writer learns at a hog farm.