Granger, Dorothy Shipley, 1899-1998

Dorothy Shipley Granger was born in Sykesville, Maryland, on January 19, 1899. The daughter of Rosalie Digges and Samuel David Shipley, she was educated at St. Joseph's Academy (McSherrystown, Penn.), Cornell University, the University of Miami at Coral Gables, and the New York School of Interior Decoration. She married Henry Raynor Granger (d. April 14, 1977), a mechanical engineer, on June 1, 1920; they had no children. She was an interior decorator and buyer for May Co. department stores (1928-1939); an insurance underwriter for Provident Mutual Life Insurance Company (1939-1944); a freelance public relations consultant (1944-1950); and public relations director for the City of Baltimore Bureau of Sanitation (1950-1969), where she instituted the first "Litterbug" campaign in Maryland and the "Clean-Up Charlie" clubs in city schools. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, she produced and moderated award-winning radio programs devoted to civic affairs.

In 1943, Granger established the American branch of the St. Joan’s Society, an organization of Catholic women interested in equal rights. She fought for the right of women to serve on juries, and was a public advocate of the Equal Rights Amendment, supporting it before it was adopted by the platform committees of both political parties. Other organizations in which she played an active role include the Maryland chapter of the National Woman’s Party, the Maryland chapter of American Women in Radio and Television, and the Women’s Association of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

Deeply devoted to her family, Granger served as secretary, treasurer, and president of the "Shipley Clan," and was given the title Dean of the Shipleys of Maryland in 1981. An ardent genealogist, she edited the 1968 volume, The Shipleys of Maryland, which, along with Granger's other genealogical records, can be found at the Historical Society of Carroll County, Maryland. Granger was in the process of compiling a supplement to the family history at the time of her death on December 13, 1998.