Name/Title
Doris/Dorothy Backey - “Hand” - Lytton GardensDescription
Doris and her twin brother were born in 1932 in Georgia. She was the oldest by twenty minutes, and their mother, a housekeeper, later had another daughter. Her father was a sharecropper on a southern plantation. When she was small, he had to flee the plantation due to an altercation with the owner. The family later joined him in Florida.
Doris met and married her husband Romar when she was sixteen. He joined the Navy and was stationed in the Bay Area, where he later worked as a baker and she held a job as a food server in a Veterans Administration Hospital.
The couple adopted and raised one of her sister’s sons, Reginald, and were married for 37 years until Romar’s death. She also worked in job placement at the California Employment Development Department until she retired.
Doris is an accomplished gospel singer and has been known to belt out “How Great Thou Art” on a bus to quiet down a group of young people. Her friend of twenty years, Judy, describes her as a loving and giving person, who is very spiritual.
