What's no different is her zest for life. For example, she said men at the facility's Wednesday night poker games are required to keep their hands above the table but she and Boyd have no such rule.
Her dad was a bootlegger who worked for Al Capone.
She has outlived both her children and four husbands, the first of whom died in a plane crash only 30 days after they were married.
She covered sports and other events for the Chicago Tribune and was one of the first women allowed inside a major league baseball locker room.
advertisement
Party Poker
The biggest online poker room with thousands of players.
Choose one of the following games:
Texas Holdem Poker, Omaha Poker, Omaha Hi,
Seven Card Stud, Stud 8 or Better.
Receive a 20% bonus of your first deposit up to a $100!!!
Party Poker
And, at age 70, she raced a snowmobile at Eagle Lake in Decatur and rolled it over, breaking her back, both legs and an ankle.
Other than that, 75-year-old Dorothy Hackley, a resident since August at the Cass County Medical Care Facility near Cassopolis, has led a fairly uneventful life.
Activities director Rhonda Hardy agreed Hackley, because of her background and her outgoing personality, is among the facility's more popular residents.
"She's had quite a colorful life. It goes beyond most of the other residents here," she said.
Men at the facility like her so well they've invited her to play in their weekly poker games. Hackley, who hadn't played the game before, said she's become good at bluffing but the best at it is Violet Boyd.
But Boyd, the only other woman at the table, has one drawback.
"She falls asleep. We have to wake her up,'' Hackley said.
A Chicago native, Hackley said she was raised by her uncle, James Corsby, in Alaska because Corsby didn't approve of her dad's lifestyle. She said her father, Francisco "The Turk'' Hildebrand, initially made his living smuggling truckloads of liquor from Canada.
When a bullet narrowly missed his head, he moved to Iowa and went to work for the railroad, she said. Hackley said he was in his 60s when he died of natural causes.
She said Corsby operated fishing boats in Alaska and was an avid baseball fan, passing on that passion to her. She eventually wound up back in the Chicago area and, at 17, married Bill Schultz, a World War II fighter pilot.
Hackley said he died when his landing gear jammed and his plane crashed and burned upon landing in Guam.
Her second husband, a Navy officer named Carl King, also was a war casualty, drowning after his boat was sunk just six months and five days after the couple's marriage.
Husband No. 3, Herndon Donnelly, a former Japanese prisoner of war, died of emphysema after the two had been wed 15 years. Her fourth husband, Allen Hackley, died following a stroke in 1998.
Hackley said she can think of only one logical reason for their deaths.
"I'm bad luck,'' she said.
As a reporter who kept baseball statistics for the Chicago Tribune, she said she attended many Cubs and White Sox games and was a particular favorite of the late Leo Durocher, who managed the Cubs at the time.
"He was my kind of guy. He was rough, tough and party time,'' she said.
Once, after women reporters were granted access to baseball locker rooms, she said the White Sox trainer gave her the OK to relax her sore knees in the clubhouse whirlpool. What she didn't know was a White Sox player would soon join her, as a prank.
She said the joke was good-natured, even if her presence in the locker rooms wasn't readily accepted.
"At first, they didn't like it,'' she said. "They made it so rough for one girl, she left the country.''
Politics, too, interests Hackley, a Democrat who once downed a beer with Billy Carter, the brother of former President Jimmy Carter, at Billy Carter's gas station in Plains, Ga.
Hackley said she lived much of her life in Dowagiac, staying at the Hamilton Square Apartments until she went into a diabetic coma in August. The coma lasted five days, but Hackley has recovered in fine fashion at the Cass facility.
"I like it here. It's so different,'' she said.
What's no different is her zest for life. For example, she said men at the facility's Wednesday night poker games are required to keep their hands above the table but she and Boyd have no such rule.
"We drop a chip every once in a while so we can play with their ankles,'' she said, laughing. "It's all in fun.''
Source: Lou Mumford, South Bend Tribune
