LaCrosse grad from 1942 donates land to Pride group

A former LaCrosse resident donated land to her beloved community.

Doris Ellis, who was born in LaCrosse, donated seven lots within the city to LaCrosse Community Pride.

Ellis, who lives in Dallas, Ore., said she wanted to do something for her hometown.

“I have owned those lots for a while and wanted to move back to LaCrosse at some point, but now I know I won’t,” Ellis said recently.

“I was interested in doing something unique.”

Ellis said her family’s home was on Main Street.

Her father, James Olne Johnson, was born in Missouri, and her mother was Alma Schwindel, who was born in Illinois.

Both families migrated from their respective states west and homesteaded in the Pampa area. Johnson died when Ellis was eight years old, she said. He was a railroad section foreman in Hay, where the family lived until his death.

They moved back to LaCrosse in 1933 and her mother married Jasper Fagg when Doris was 10 years old.

The newly formed family moved to a small farm near Hooper. Ellis said the school there only had one student in the sixth through eighth grades.

She said the teachers in Hooper were husband and wife. The husband’s name was Caroll C. Coe and Ellis said he was a real cowboy, riding broncs in rodeos when he wasn’t teaching.

When she became a high school student, she rode a bus from Hooper to LaCrosse. She graduated from LaCrosse High School in 1942.

In the 1950s, her mother worked in the Almarran Hotel in LaCrosse as a cook. The hotel was on three of the lots that Ellis donated.

“She was a fabulous baker,” Ellis said.

Ellis said she talked with Lois Startin, a member of LaCrosse Community Pride, who told her what the organization was doing.

“I didn’t need the money,” Ellis said.

“So much of my life was involved in LaCrosse, so I thought donating the lots was a good thing to do.”

The last time she was in LaCrosse was seven or eight years ago, and she doesn’t know when she’ll be able to visit again.

Her husband, Marvin Charles Ellis, is buried at the LaCrosse cemetery.