Doris Ann Bartanen
Doris Ann Bartanen, loving wife of Ronald Dale Bartanen, went home to be with the Lord on July 1, 2022.
Funeral services will be held 11:00 a.m. Wednesday, July 6, 2022, at McMullin-Young Funeral Home, Sullivan. Visitation will be held an hour prior to the service, Wednesday at the funeral home. Burial will be in Greenhill Cemetery, Sullivan. Memorials may be made to the Highway Church of Christ in Sullivan.
She was born on January 4, 1936 to Thomas and Lillian Gordon of Sycamore Landing, Tennessee. She often spoke fondly of the Hollow where she was born, her gentle southern accent pronouncing it as "the holler" where she spent her formative years near the Loretta Lynn Dude Ranch. Her father was a sharecropper who died at the hands of a drunk driver before she was born, leaving her mother with four young mouths to feed in a log cabin. Her mother then married her deceased husband's brother, L.C. Gordon, and had two more daughters and a son. Doris and her three older siblings picked cotton to help with the sharecropping duties. Mamie Gordon and Mamie Curtis and her many cousins pitched in to help garden and raise the large family.
Doris was preceded in death by most of her family, her sisters: Gladys Hale of Jackson, TN, Ollie Mae Brown of Humboldt, TN, Louise Llewellyn of Morris, IL, and two brothers - one who died as an infant and the other - Junior Gordon - who died as a young man. Her remaining sister, Martha Gordon, resides in Collinsville, Illinois.
She attended high school in Gadsden, Tennessee. Highlights of her school years included being named the salutatorian and Strawberry Queen of her school. A portrait of Doris, crowned as Strawberry Queen, graced the family home for several years.
Young women were often counseled in their last year of high school to find themselves a preacher to take good care of them and "out of those hollows." She soon met Ronald Bartanen, a young minister who was a Bible Student attending Freed Hardeman College in Henderson, Tennessee, when he came to speak at Cox's Chapel, the little country church that Doris attended.
Doris graduated in May of 1954, and married Ronald on June 1, 1954. They welcomed a son, Richard Paul, the following year on July 27, 1955, and a daughter, Beth Ann, four years later on September 23, 1959. Ron and Doris had the privilege of celebrating their 68th wedding anniversary this past June.
While she was active in the ministry as a minister’s wife and Sunday School teacher, her primary focus and joy was that of being a mother.
Their lives together in the ministry took them far from the hills of Tennessee, from congregations throughout the Midwest to upper Michigan. While she often longed for those hills, she worked diligently to help her husband build up the Lord's church and remained faithfully by his side while he continued to preach to a small congregation in Arthur, Illinois while they were both in their 80s. Doris was her husband's biggest supporter of his artwork, helping him pick out frames and attending art shows where he won many awards.
Doris is survived by her loving husband Ronald Bartanen and their two children Rick (Crystal) Bartanen of Pace, Florida and Beth (Mike) Cooper of Great Falls Montana and their five granddaughters; Jami (Mark) Johnson, Atwood, Illinois, Katrina Bartanen, Monticello, Illinois, Sarah Weeks, Fairbury, Illinois, Kaitlin (Edwin) Torres, Helena, Montana and Kristen (Jake) Johnson, Bozeman, Montana; ten great-grandchildren; Carissa and Aaron Williams, Rianne and Clayton Ayers, Benjamin, Kayla, Sophia and Ethan Johnson, and Carder and Sadie Weeks.
The family was blessed to all spend Easter together with their grandma Doris. As they stood in a circle holding hands Doris was able to join in the singing of Amazing Grace. We concluded with the words "Will the circle be unbroken by and by Lord in the sky."
Condolences may be offered to the family at www.mcmullinyoung.com
