Dorothy Bradberry Woody, 94, of Woodstock, died Aug. 31, 2015 following a brief illness. She was a lifelong homemaker who raised three children with her husband of 62 years, Elbert Mark Woody (1915-2002). It was a point of pride for our Daddy that she never needed to work outside the home. She was an accomplished seamstress who sewed clothes for us kids that we were mostly not embarrassed to wear, and numerous tiny dresses for baby dolls. She had learned to tat, crochet and knit at the foot of an elderly neighbor who babysat her as a child, and she was still sewing and adjusting her own clothes just days before her death. She enjoyed gardening and could take a cutting of anything, put it in a jar in the window and make it grow well enough to be transplanted to the yard. Her favorite plants were old-fashioned snowball bushes and thorny antique roses that shattered to the touch after only a few fragrant days of existence. She was also fascinated by astronomy and could identify any star formation in the sky. On a trip to the Grand Canyon in 2004, she was an eager participant in a telescopic tour of the night sky. Through a telescope set up in a parking lot she was tickled to see the rings of Saturn and craters on the moon and she corrected our guide who forgot the name of the Pleiades formation. Most of all, she was a lover of any animal, no matter how tiny, wild or unappreciative of her attentions. Currently dining on her screened-in back porch are an irretrievably feral black cat, a box turtle, two very large and hungry raccoons, several chipmunks and a large groundhog that only lately crashed the party. Known as "Dottie" to the family, she and Mark Woody began married life in the early 40s living in a bedroom at her older sister's home in Atlanta. They later lived in Rome, Ga. and spent several decades on Oakdale Road in Smyrna before moving in 1976 to Woodstock where they grew a large vegetable garden and a variety of unusual native plants. For many years they rambled all over north Georgia and the Great Smoky Mountains in a 1969 pickup truck with a slide-in camper. She liked camping and hiking, no matter how rugged the wilderness, and continued going, at a slower pace, until she was in her mid-80s. Daddy was never able to convince her to move to an assisted living home because "They're just full of old people." Despite back surgery when she was 88, a broken hip and a stroke last fall, she always battled back to health with the goal to live independently in her own home. She cooked her own food, balanced her own checkbook, laughed at her own jokes and generally carried on like a stubbornly independent country woman until a week before her death. She was born in Abbeville, S.C. on July 2, 1921 to Mary Pledger Bradberry and Allison Bradberry, and spent much of her childhood in Athens, Ga. She was the second of three girls in the family, but was orphaned at age 16 when both of her parents died. Her older sister, Allene Strickland, who was married with children of her own, took in Dottie and her younger sister, Helen. She met and married Elbert Mark Woody in 1940. Because her own father was a plumber, she suggested to her new husband that he should train in the trade and he made a steady living as a plumber and later became the chief of building inspections for Cobb County. She is survived by son Alan Mark Woody (b. 1941) and daughter-in-law Leanne Woody, daughter Gayle Taylor (b. 1945) and son-in-law Lee Taylor, and daughter Laura Woody Weaver (b. 1961) and son-in-law Harold Weaver, 3 granddaughters and one great-grandson. The family will receive friends 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, Sept. 5 at Darby Funeral Home, 480 East Main Street, Canton, Ga., followed by the service. Burial is planned at New Liberty Baptist Church in Ellijay, Ga.