Mary Shuham Dore, 78, tireless champion of SIDS research

When Jane Kuper was a child, she would ride around town with her mom in her blue station wagon, one big enough to hold five kids, leaving empty soda cans at grocery stores for customers to drop in coins to help with research into Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

"We would spend hours wrapping them with the blue-and-white, 'help for the research of SIDS' labels," said Kuper. "Very rarely did we bring empty cans back to the car."

Kuper's mother, Mary Shuham Dore, died Tuesday (Nov. 6) at her home in Clyde Hill after a series of strokes. She was 78.

Mrs. Dore was born and reared in Walla Walla, attended Whitman College and moved to Seattle to work for Frederick & Nelson department store. She married Fred Dore in 1956.

Mrs. Dore, who lost her fourth child, Christine, to SIDS in 1961, was instrumental in raising money for SIDS research and starting one of the nation's first foundations dedicated to searching for the causes of what was then called crib death.

In addition to pestering politicians, she would call families who lost a child to SIDS to lend support.

"Mary was a disturber of the peace, and she was always right," said Dr. Abe Bergman, a noted Seattle pediatrician. "She was more important to SIDS than anyone in the world. Her doggedness helped people realize they did not kill their children. That's what triggered the whole research movement, not by doctors but by lay people like Mary."

Through her husband, former legislator and State Supreme Court Justice Fred Dore, Mrs. Dore was able to get money from the Legislature for SIDS research.

"Mary was brilliant," said Bergman. "With her compassionate heart, she was the single most important person in the field." He said through Mrs. Dore's work and state money, Children's Hospital & Regional Medical Center set up the largest SIDS research project in the world. "She would visit people personally and organized a support group that became advocates for research," he said.

Friends and family members said Mrs. Dore would read obituary notices every day to find families who lost a child to SIDs and would call with support.

"She was an advocate for everybody or anything," said her son Frederick "Rick" Dore. "She would always make herself available to talk to grieving families."

Deborah Robinson, infant-death specialist at the SIDS Foundation of Washington, the oldest in the country, said Mrs. Dore was her hero:

"She paved the way for many of us. She had a heart for the families. She would call our chief medical examiner if she thought something was incorrect, and had no problem going toe to toe with public-health officials. She was a champion of social justice before social justice was popular."

Kuper said she always knew when another baby had died when she heard her mother on the telephone. "She honestly felt that she had a responsibility to help other families who had lost babies," she said.

As for collecting money in the SIDS cans, Kuper said they would drive back to the stores, collect the cans, count out the donations, wash the cans and take them back to the stores.

Six months ago, when her mother was recovering from bypass surgery, Kuper told her of a family at a local school who had had a SIDS baby. "Mom wanted to send them a note," she said.

Mrs. Dore, a voracious reader, was involved in many organizations, including the Irish Heritage Club, Seattle University, Kappa Kappa Gamma and Sacred Heart Church, where she worked in the grief ministry. She received the 2007 Sally Rodgers Award for Lifelong Achievement from Whitman College.

Nancy Bradley met Mrs. Dore through Kappa Kappa Gamma and lived down the street from her. "Her family was her number one priority," said Bradley, who said Mrs. Dore would invite her to the family's Easter dinner and there would be 20 people at the table. "She was extremely caring and very generous and compassionate."

Daughter Margaret Dore said that her mother's life "was one of juxtapositions, in which she gave of herself to look out for the 'little guy.' My mother was born into a life of relative affluence in Walla Walla. Her father was a bank vice president.

"As a child, she was taught to have empathy for those less fortunate, including the prisoners in the nearby penitentiary and their families," Margaret Dore said. "She told me that she and her classmates would sing for the prisoners at Christmastime."

After she got married in 1956, the Dores lived in Seattle's Madrona neighborhood. As the civil-rights movement was coming to the forefront, Mrs. Dore argued for equal rights, Margaret Dore said.

"As in the rest of the country, the '60s and early '70s brought violence. On February 6, 1970, our house was bombed, with no one hurt. My mother was home with my four siblings," Margaret Dore said.

In 1992, Mrs. Dore learned that a person she thought might be responsible for the bombing was going to attend an arts event in Seattle, said Margaret Dore, who went with her mother to the event.

"She went right up to him. He had an alibi, that he had been in jail that night," Margaret Dore said. "They got in a discussion over the ethics of bombing, which we would now call domestic terrorism. Her position was simple: 'I didn't like being bombed.' "

Margaret Dore added that one dream her mother had was to establish a charitable foundation to help SIDS and other charities, including prison ministries, and last year she fulfilled that dream by creating the Fred H. and Mary S. Dore Charitable Foundation.

Mrs. Dore's husband preceded her in death. She is survived by daughters Kuper, of Seattle, Margaret Dore, of Seattle, and Teresa Busch, of Redmond, and sons Frederick Dore, of Silverdale, and Tim Dore, of Seattle.

A service will be held Wednesday at 9 a.m. at Sacred Heart Church, 9460 N.E. 14th St. in Bellevue. A visitation will be Tuesday from 1 to 4 p.m. at Hoffner, Fisher and Harvey Funeral Home, 508 N. 36th St., Seattle.

The family asks that memorials in her name be sent to the SIDS Foundation of Washington, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N., Suite 348, Seattle, WA 98103; or the Fred H. and Mary S. Dore Charitable Foundation, 117 E. Louisa St., No. 293, Seattle, WA 98102; or a charity of the donor's choice.

Seattle Times desk editor Bill Kossen contributed to this report. Susan Gilmore: 206-464-2054 or sgilmore@seattletimes.com