Field Hall namesake to be celebrated this weekend

Published 1:30 am Friday, June 12, 2026

PORT ANGELES — When Dorothy Field was about to say goodbye to her husband Walter Field, she asked him a question.

“He was near the end. I asked him what he wanted me to do with the money — which he had made — and he said, ‘Do what you want to do.’”

Dorothy recalls that conversation in a short video Field Arts & Events Hall made before the venue opened three years ago.

She remembers too how music transformed her life. When she was a girl, Field took piano lessons, and she played a used piano her parents bought after cashing in a savings bond during World War II.

She later became a singer, a soprano who would sing anything, but loved art songs most of all.

Field, who died in October at age 88, is one among the Field Hall “angels,” along with donors Donna M. Morris, Pat Donlin, Mary Whitmore and Laura Cooksey. Her desire, since she came to the North Olympic Peninsula, was to see a performing arts center built, a place where artists of all disciplines could share their work, and where the arts would enliven the local economy.

This weekend, Field Hall, the 41,000-square-foot venue perched on the Port Angeles waterfront, will celebrate a milestone. With a $3.4 million bequest from Field’s estate, the hall’s construction debt is paid off. So the Oak Street block beside the hall will be given over to a street party with live music and activities, free to the public, for Field Day from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

That bequest is only one of many gifts Field gave both the project and the process.

Dorothy Ann Gamblin grew up in another timber community, Lebanon, Ore., with her cousin, Linda Zimmerman, who was like a sister to her. Their fathers had both migrated to the Northwest for lumber-mill jobs.

Dorothy studied hard, both in school and at her piano, Zimmerman remembered. She won a scholarship to the University of Oregon, majored in English, and went to work as a counselor at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, Calif.

That was where, through a mutual friend, she met Walter.

The couple married in 1966, and Dorothy became a homemaker and stepmother to Walter’s three children from a previous marriage. She also continued to sing, and when the couple moved to Vancouver, Wash., Dorothy joined the community chorus, which traveled to Moscow and Leningrad, Russia, on a concert tour. In her passport photo, Dorothy’s smile reflects her joy.

Dorothy also adored water views. She and Walter relocated in 1993 to Port Angeles to a house on Bay Street with a sweeping vista of the strait.

On Jan. 29, 2016, Dorothy went to a fateful meeting in her adopted city. Port Angeles attorney Stephen Moriarty, who knew Dorothy, invited her to join the session along with other community leaders keenly interested in building a performing arts center: Bill Kindler, Karen McCormack, Judith Morris, Brooke Taylor, Port Angeles City Manager Nathan West and Dan Wilder.

“Steve (Moriarty) had called me in November 2015 and told me about the project,” Taylor recalled in a recent interview.

He knew some of the people at the meeting, but Taylor had never met Dorothy.

“Her recently deceased husband had been a very successful banker,” he said, but Taylor knew little else about this elegantly dressed woman. She seemed a bit shy.

A couple of meetings later, Dorothy raised her hand.

“She said, ‘I would be willing to purchase the Oak Street property and donate it,’” Taylor remembered.

At that moment, “you could have heard a pin drop.”

Dorothy, 78 at the time, had made it clear she was ready to buy the prime parcel of land where a waterfront arts and conference center could be built.

And so she did.

Dorothy gave the land, which she purchased for $1.425 million, to this blue-sky effort.

The organizing committee became a board of directors, and the conceptualizing, planning, hiring, groundbreaking, building, delays and resumption of construction followed.

On the $34 million center’s first floor are the 500-seat Donna M. Morris Theater, along with the Waterfront Coffee Bar and Laura Cooksey Gallery of local artists’ work. Upstairs, the Sunset Lounge and event center command a floor-to-ceiling view of the strait and the Olympic Mountains.

Since the venue’s debut, hundreds of concerts, meetings, expos, performances and weddings have taken place at Field Hall. The organization presents arts education programs and offers financial assistance to modest-income ticket buyers. Free performances appear on the calendar weekly.

Kindler, an original board member, credits Dorothy with ensuring the hall was two stories high.

“We were debating about one floor versus two; it’s cheaper to do one,” he said.

But “she was adamant. There was to be no further discussion,” Kindler recalled.

The center would have a second floor with a great view.

Time and again, Dorothy urged the board to, in her words, go big or go home. She also backed it up with financial support. Dorothy repeatedly donated funds — to provide working capital, to seed the endowment and finally to pay off the construction loan.

“Dorothy made a number of substantial gifts that totaled more than half the cost of the project,” Moriarty noted.

Her support, with Morris’ $9 million launching gift and contributions from the community, have together made Field Hall come to life, he said.

Yet Dorothy was not invested in having the center named after her.

“That was really the board’s idea,” said Elson Strahan, a longtime friend of both Dorothy and Walter and the executor of Dorothy’s estate.

“She acquiesced,” Strahan said — but seeing her name on the building was nowhere near the top of her priority list.

“I asked Walter at one point about (supporting) his alma mater,” Stanford University, Strahan added.

“He said, ‘I could give my entire estate (to the institution), and it would be just a ripple in the pond.”

Instead, both Walter and Dorothy chose to give to causes they felt would make an impact on the community.

“They were both very intriguing folks, very accomplished,” Strahan said, “focused on being able to make a difference.”

“Music was extremely important to Dorothy,” he added, “and she loved Port Angeles.”

Field Arts & Events Hall celebrated its grand opening with a series of outdoor and indoor performances. Dorothy, however, was in poor health, and could only attend one concert. Fittingly, it was given by a pianist, Katya Grineva, on July 16, 2023.

Field Hall Artistic and Executive Director Steve Raider-Ginsburg remembers that day.

When Dorothy saw Field Hall finished, he said, “she was just so happy.”

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Diane Urbani de la Paz is a freelance writer and photographer who lives in Port Townsend.