McDOUGALL, GALE J.
GALE J. McDOUGALL, of Lakewood, formerly of Hiram, passed away on Friday, December 20, 2013 after a defiant battle with cancer. She was 64 years old. Gale was a restless, hard-working yet accommodating woman who exemplified the American Dream. Gale grew up in Maumee, Ohio. She moved to and attended Kent State University where she met and married the love of her life, Charles. She worked her way through college, having four children along the way. Gale was an entrepreneur and owned three different businesses; The Red Radish Restaurant in Kent, The Tree House, a children’s clothing store in Aurora and McDougall Productions, Inc. in Cleveland. She took great pride in her work for the Cleveland Orchestra’s Star-Spangled Spectacular and Tower City’s outstanding Christmas airship display. Mrs. McDougall also secured her nursing degree and became a labor and delivery nurse for Mt. Sinai Hospital in Cleveland.
Always an active member of the community, Mrs. McDougall served as an on-call nurse for Hiram College and as the Vice-President and then President for the Crestwood School District Sports Boosters. She devoted countless hours to masterful creations for Halloween costumes and reveled in the intensity of the Hiram Fire Department costume contests from the 1970s and through the 1980s. She decorated wagons and bicycles for Fourth of July parades with patriotic exuberance. She hosted innumerable birthday parties, graduation parties and teen dances as if heads of state might be invited. Mrs. McDougall always made sure to have her world-famous, homemade hot chocolate ready for the tired and cold sled-riders in the neighborhood. She excelled in her role as Wonder Woman when her children decided it was time to play super heroes. It was widely known that without her bullet-proof armlets and golden lasso of truth, mankind might not have fared so well against the forces of evil.
Mrs. McDougall spent a great portion of her life sailing. She raced sailboats on lakes and rivers all over Ohio and Michigan. One of her last trips with her husband involved taking their fifty foot sailboat out Lake Erie to the Erie Canal, down the Hudson River and through the Intracoastal Waterway to the Florida Keys.
Survivors include her mother, Juanita Johns (Dieas), husband, Charles Angus II, son Charles Angus III and wife Michelle (Kaderly) of Freedom Township and their children Meghan Lorraine and Charles Aidan, son Gregory Ethan of Burbank, California and his daughter Kalistee, daughter Mary Ilea of Columbia Falls, Montana, daughter Molly Francis (Burns) and husband Patrick of Whitefish, Montana, sister, Melanie Francis (Perez) and husband Glenn of Avon Lake, nephew Ronald Melville Smith of Cleveland, brother, John Melville Johns and wife Fran of Rancho Cucamonga, California. A remembrance will take place at University Circle United Methodist Church, 1919 East 107th Street, Cleveland, Ohio on Monday, December 30th at 7:00PM. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the American Cancer Society.