Ready for the next chapter

By Gretchen Ammerman

Oregon Coast TODAY

When I first learned that one of the contributors to the Oregon Coast TODAY, Dana Grae Kane, donates her fees to the Lincoln County Animal Shelter, I knew I had found a person who writes truly for the love of writing.

A native Oregonian, Dana was born in Bend to a pioneer family and raised in Portland.

“I started writing as a child,” she said. “I won a writing contest with a poem when I was seven and it apparently impressed the judges, because I became a ‘poster child' for a Ford Foundation/Stanford Research Institute experimental program to introduce foreign language education into Oregon public elementary schools.”

Dana’s love of writing soon became only a way to pay the bills, first to get through college, and later when she married a man who had sustained a brain injury when he was young, resulting in a tumor that caused a slow, painful and cruel dismantling of the larger-than-life man she first knew.

“My husband was uninsured so I had to make money fast,” she said. “Ghost writing for people that are desperate is like a cross between being a prostitute and an art forger. People are willing to pay large amounts of cash rather than admit they need help.”

Describing him as sometimes “spectacularly ill,” Dana said her husband sometimes had bouts of raving and, at the end, no longer even recognized her.

“People would ask why didn’t I leave him,” she said. “I gave my word to stay with him in sickness and in health and I did.”

After he passed away 2007, Dana found herself with free time for the first time in decades.

“I’m happy I don’t have to work just for money anymore,” she said “I invested wisely, and I’m not much of a spender. If I don’t eat too much, I’ll be fine.”

Caring for her husband meant having pets was out of the question.

“I’ve always loved animals,” she said. “As a child I let my neighbor’s dogs pull me all over Bend and had a huge jackrabbit named Harvey I would walk on a string. Once my husband was gone I adopted my [cat] Pansy Pumpkin Pie. She died in 2017 at the age of 17.”

Once Pansy passed, Dana decided that instead of adopting again, she would try house- and pet-sitting, for trade or for money which she donated to animal rescue and assistance programs, including the SPCA, Humane Society, Lincoln County Animal Shelter and the Beach Bark fund, which helps dog owners with veterinary bills.

“I fancifully envision my IPO, funded by major animal rights venture capitalists,” she said. “It can be listed on the New York Stock Exchange as Pee, Poop & Scoop, Inc.”

The work made Dana many dear friends, but did not have a smooth start.

“I thought I’d killed the first dog I sat for,” she said. “He grabbed from my hand a full coffee filter and swallowed it. I called the vet and said, ‘I’m pet sitting, and I think I’ve killed this dog.’”

The person who answered the phone started laughing then accurately named the dog, saying it wasn’t his first foray into caffeine consumption.

“I was thinking, ‘What a great way to launch my business,’” Dana said. “He’s still alive and well, though. Luckily he weighed more than I did.”

As a volunteer, Dana has been a foreign language diction coach, started the Short-Story Discussion Group at the Lincoln City Senior Center, was a “Noble Weeding Gnome Emeritus,” at Connie Hansen Garden, and has fund-raised for the Portland Chamber Orchestra and the Siletz Bay Music Festival. She helped found Beachtown Charities Thrift Shop and was deeply involved with the Lincoln City Warming Shelter and Homeless Solutions.

“I think you should give what you can, for as long as you can,” she said. “Life is a woven fabric, maybe with some frayed ends, but what makes a life is all of a piece, and you should damn well make sure some of the fragments have meaning.” 

Dana never lost her love of writing, and in addition to her contributions to the TODAY, she has written articles for the North American Society of Pipe Collectors, as she is “an admirer of antique briar and carved meerschaum pipes.” She published “The Castle Gargoyle,” and “Odd Jobs:” the first a memorial tribute to her husband's courage in the face of his medical challenges, the second a motivational work to inspire readers facing massive debt.

Sadly, I only recently made friends with Dana. We talked for two and a half hours without stopping, and I’m sure we could talk for days. But Lincoln City is about to lose this treasured community member to San Francisco, where she and her husband lived for roughly 20 years.

“While I will greatly miss my many friends on the Oregon Coast, it’s time to go where my loving relatives and old friends will be able to help me age gracefully,” she said. “It doesn't hurt that I have been madly in love with ‘The City’ since I first saw it from the Marin Headlands, seeming to float magically on the fog.  All are invited to visit me when the horrors of our plague have been mastered.  Genuine friendship is never diminished by distance.”

You can keep in touch with Dana at 541-921-4541 and dana.kane9211@gmail.com.