Doris Park

A celebration of life for Doris Park, 72, of Wellman will be held Thursday, July 26, 2018 at 10:00AM at the Peterseim Funeral Home in Kalona. Burial will follow at the Wellman Mennonite Cemetery in Wellman.  Visitation will be held Wednesday, July 25, 2018 from 5 – 7 PM at the Peterseim Funeral Home. Doris Park died Friday, July 6, 2018 at the University of Iowa Hospital.

Doris Elaine Chaffee Park was born in 1945 in Victoria, Texas. She grew up spending summers in Minnesota and winters on the gulf coast of Texas. She studied at the University of Minnesota and lived for many years in Minneapolis before moving in 1988 to Iowa. A naturally gifted artist, she worked in drawing and painting many years before moving to bronze sculpture. Throughout her life, she loved animals and developed an uncanny ability to realistically portray them in all her artwork. In 1999, she married Stephen Maxon and joined him in running his fine-arts foundry, Max-Cast, in Kalona.

She adored horses and was a dedicated member of the Davenport Arabian Horse Conservancy. She was active in the Washington County Democrats and a member of the Washington County Soil and Water Commission. For the last several years, she has devoted much of her energy to the restoration of the Bunker Mill Bridge near Kalona. A fund to support the project has beend established: Memorial Fund for Doris Park, c/o Friends of the Bunker Mill Bridge, Inc., 1450 Fir Avenue, Wellman, IA 52356. (Donations are tax deductible.)

She is survived by her beloved husband whom she always called Max, her daughter Catherine Park and son-in-law Benjamin Vail, grandsons Isaac and Elias Vail, older brother John Chaffee, and sisters Judith Ojard, Barbara Chaffee, and Marilyn Zornado.

She is preceded in death by her father, Eben W. Chaffee, and her mother Jane Deason.