Dorothy "Dottie" Cost

Former Bellefontaine City Schools teacher Dorothy “Dottie” Elaine Cost of Cumming, Georgia, died Tuesday, July 29, at Northside Hospital in Atlanta following a battle with aggressive cancer. She was 82.

Cost was born November 30, 1942, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the only child of Rudolph and Olga Groch. She grew up in Metuchen, New Jersey, and graduated from Metuchen High School in 1960.

She then attended American University in Washington, DC, where she was a Student Senator and an active member of the Beta Rho Chapter of Alpha Chi Omega sorority. As activities chair, she planned many of the group’s cultural activities around the capital. This was during the Kennedy administration and she and her sorority sisters attended one of President Kennedy’s inaugural balls as guests. A few years later, she was remembered for her leadership as a dorm residence counselor and a calming presence to residents during the Cuban Missile Crisis and after the Kennedy assassination. She attended the Kennedy funeral procession with those classmates. She spent summers working at public libraries in Metuchen and New York City and spent a summer semester studying at the University of California, Berkeley. She was selected for Who’s Who Among Students in Colleges and Universities. Cost graduated from American University with a degree in English in 1964.

Following college, Cost spent a year working as a civilian on a U.S. Army base in Grafenwoehr, Germany, where she met her future husband, Donn Cost of Bellefontaine, who preceded her in death.

After moving back to the United States, she took additional courses at Newark State Teachers College in New Jersey to obtain her elementary teaching certification. She then taught a year in both Metuchen and Prince George’s County, Maryland.

Dottie and Donn got married on Aug. 12, 1967, at Centenary Methodist Church in Metuchen and she moved to Bellefontaine, where she taught two years at Southeastern Elementary.

She and her husband had two children, and she substitute taught when her children were young. In 1984, she returned to teaching at Western Elementary and Southeastern. She later taught middle school language arts and social studies and enjoyed using her experience abroad to help bring the world to Bellefontaine students. While teaching in Bellefontaine, Cost also served as a language arts resource teacher, was named a Martha Holden Jennings scholar, and was awarded a Kaizei Koho Center Teacher fellowship study in Japan. Following her retirement in 2007, she returned to substitute teaching for a few years.

In Bellefontaine, Cost was a member of the La Cultura women’s group and Margaret Riddle Circle of Kings Daughters and served with the Cultural Arts Commission, bringing cultural programs to Logan County. She was a member of the Methodist Church and later the Presbyterian Church.

Following the death of her husband, she moved to Cumming, Georgia, to be closer to her daughter and grandson, whom she adored and enjoyed watching grow up.

During her childhood, Cost enjoyed going to the Jersey Shore. That led to a lifetime love of the beach. She also enjoyed international travel with her grown children. She valued the lifelong friendships she made in college and over the decades she lived in Bellefontaine and later Cumming. She enjoyed getting to know the women of Cumming through book clubs, church groups and games of Rummikub.

She is survived by her son, Donn Cost Jr. of Arlington, Virginia, and her daughter, Debbie Cost Calabro, her son-in-law, Michael Calabro Jr. and her grandson, Michael Calabro III, all of Milton, Georgia.

The family will receive friends on Friday, August 8, 2025, from 4-6pm at Eichholtz & Daring Funeral Home & Cremation Center, Bellefontaine, where Pastor Rob Fulton will officiate the funeral on Saturday, August 9, at 10am. Burial will follow in Bellefontaine Cemetery.

Memorial contributions in Dorothy’s memory can be made to the American Cancer Society.

EICHHOLTZ & DARING FUNERAL HOME & Cremation Center, Bellefontaine, is honored to serve the Cost family and encourages anyone to share a fond memory or message of condolence at www.eichholtzdaring.com

FAMILY AUTHORED OBITUARY / ejt