Hazel M. Dowty

Hazel Maxine Dowty, resident of Vintage Park Waterfront Assisted Living, entered paradise Sunday, January 28th, 2024.

Her 99 years, ten months was 38 days short of her life’s goal of a one hundredth birthday, March 5th, 2024 with acute kidney failure.

Hazel is preceded in death by her parents, Carter and Elsie (Morris) Gaines, of Bellflower, Missouri and her husband, Luther Naaman Dowty of Wichita. The eldest of four children her siblings are her brothers, Floyd Gaines of Lenexa, Ks, Melvin Gaines, deceased, and sister Doris (Gaines) Elliott, deceased.

Hazel attended Asbury Methodist College where she studied music and served in the music department as an accompanist to vocal music students. After meeting Luther Naaman Dowty in a camp meeting, she married and served in ministry with him for 68 years assisting in music and performing artistic renderings of bible themes. Hazel and Luther established the first music department in the Independence Kansas Bible School. After two years they traveled in fulltime evangelistic ministry until 1956 when they moved to Wichita, Ks. to serve as pastors of the First Pilgrim Holiness Church and later the Bethel Wesleyan Church. Hazel was employed by NCR for 15 years as a computer production technician building circuit board components. Hazel was mother to four sons, Milton, Marcus, Michael, Meredith, and a grandmother to children of Meredith; Tyler (Dowty) Brown, Ian Dowty, and Children of Michael; Barbara Scales, Jennifer Kissamis, Nicole Freer, Krista McGowen, and Elizabeth Dowty; producing 10 grandchildren, and 3 great-great grandchildren.

A Celebration of Life service will be held March 2nd, 2024, at 11:30 am at Central Avenue United Methodist Church, 4920 W. Central Ave., Wichita, Kansas 67212.

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