Dorothy Zolynas

DOROTHY ARLEN ZOLYNAS -“Arlie”

March 7, 1944 – October 17, 2024

She liked to refer to herself as an introvert, took pride in preferring a quiet read over a raucous party. And yet, she was an introvert who stood for years in front of hundreds of classes and thousands of students in her long teaching career at MiraCosta Community College. She lectured, led discussions, and patiently drew her students out with pointed questions and observations. In her American Studies classes, she even taught her students various colonial and early American dance forms in classrooms where the desks had been pushed back to the walls and the room transformed into a makeshift dance floor. With her tapes of old American music, she’d instruct everyone in the steps and patterns of reels, allemandes, minuets, and barn dances. Students came away enlivened and astonished at what their forebears had done for enjoyment and entertainment in the days before electronics.

Dorothy Arlen Zolynas, née Williams—she liked to be called Arlie—was born March 7, 1944 in Coalville, Utah to a decorated soldier of our “greatest generation,” Floyd David Williams, then serving in the artillery division of the U.S. Cavalry in the Pacific Theater of World War II, and to a mother, Dorothy Anderton Williams who, like so many women of her generation, “kept the home fires burning” and raised her new daughter largely on her own but with some help from her sisters who also had new-borns.

After the war, Arlie’s family lived in Japan for a time, and then in Okinawa as her father made his way up the ranks, and her mother took on lead roles in volunteering for the Red Cross. A succession of assignments followed for Major, then Lt. Colonel, then Colonel Williams stateside in places like Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Pentagon. Arlie had no choice but to be disenrolled from and re-enrolled in one school after another. However, she did enjoy a stable four years at Hampton High School in Virginia, where she graduated with honors. No matter where Arlie went to school, she was always a top student.

Despite the many Army posts Arlie lived on, home was always the small mountain town of Coalville and her mother’s even smaller town of Henefer “just down the road a piece.” She and her parents and sister, Robyn, returned to Utah every summer and, whenever they could, celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas at home with their large extended Utah family.

After she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Utah in 1966 and was elected to the prestigious Phi Beta Kappa honors society, she enrolled in graduate school at the U of U where she had been awarded a Teaching Assistantship. Classes had not even begun when she met Al Zolynas, also a new grad student and TA, and it was the proverbial love at first sight for both of them. They were married at the Fort Douglas chapel in June of the next year.

For the next 58 years Arlie and Al lived an ordinary but rich life, full of challenges, travel adventures, profoundly enriched by the many friends they met and bonded with along the way as Al accepted one short “fixed term” teaching position after another in places like Marshall, Minnesota and Ogden, Utah. They were a “child free” couple despite an early pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage and another that resulted in a stillbirth. Traumatic events to be sure, but Arlie had been heard to say—years later—when asked about the secret of the success of her marriage, that it was owed, in part, to never having had children. Free of the responsibilities of child-rearing, both Arlie and Al were able to pursue a wide range of interests, such as reading, writing, travel, various forms of inner-work and life-affirming practices and teachings. Arlie was, as they say, a “life-long learner,” and took especial enjoyment over the years from watching scores of The Teaching Company’s “Great Courses” videos, everything from “How to Play Chess” and “Epic Engineering Failures” to “Reading Biblical Literature” and “Real Zen for Real Life.”  

After getting herself trained as a paralegal in her late 30s, and after a year of work during which she realized that it wasn’t a profession for her, Arlie made the courageous decision to go back to school and finish the Masters’ degree she had abandoned twenty years earlier in Utah. Now in California, she enrolled in the graduate English program at San Diego State University, supported herself with part-time teaching, and finished her degree in 1983. Her goal had been to get back into teaching, specifically in a community college. When a position opened up at MiraCosta Community College in Oceanside, she applied, was interviewed, and was soon hired. There followed 25 fulfilling years in the classroom teaching composition, literature and American Studies, and fully participating in the academic and professional life of the Letters Department. Arlie remained physically active for as long as her health permitted, especially enjoying organized aerobic dancing and walking the hilly paths of her neighborhood.

Both Arlie and Al retired from their respective teaching positions in 2010 and continued their quiet lives of togetherness, reflection, and learning, enjoying the company of their “lunch-bunch” friends and relatives and other long-time friends. In 2023, Arlie was diagnosed with melanoma, and like all things that came her way, she managed to take it in stride with a minimum of complaint, even gracefully. After recent complications, she went into hospice care and died peacefully on October 17, 2024. Arlie is survived by her husband and life-long partner Al, her niece Dana—who always saw her as a surrogate mother—and her nephews Brian and Nicholas, her two grand-nephews, Dylan and Ian, and her grand-niece, Sierra.  

Please feel free to make donations to your favorite charities in Arlie’s name. She was especially supportive of organizations that did good for animals, disaster relief, and cancer research.

A Celebration of Life will be organized in the spring of 2025.

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