Granddaughter of former Tribune employee regains ownership of family home after nearly 20 years.

When Laura (Doak) Springer, Pam (Doak) Gray and Mike Doak were children, family gatherings took place at their grandmother's, Grace Doak, home on Walnut Court in Columbia.

Gray, who was born in Columbia but raised in Hallsville, spent many hours and days with her grandmother at her home.

"My dad took graduate school classes at Mizzou. When he was at night school, he would drop me off at granny's. This was a home base for all of our families," she said.

Doak had seven children and multiple grandchildren, which includes Springer, and her cousins Gray and Mike Doak.

"She was a very independent woman, who never wore a pair of pants and never learned to drive a car," Gray said about her grandmother, adding she would get places either by taxi or bus. "She was a very liberated and forward-thinking woman who valued education and that filtered down to all of us."

This home-based connection on Walnut Court was lost to the family in 1995 with Grace Doak's death and the sale of the property. It has swapped hands roughly five times in the nearly 20 intervening years but now is back in Doak family ownership. Springer actively pursued the property and was able to purchase the residence from accessible housing real estate developer and Bright City Lights Owner Kay Wax last year.

"We had Christmases here and it would be packed. There would be no place to sit or stand and you would rotate around from room to room," Springer said about what is essentially a two-bedroom bungalow.

The space also worked as a "grandmother's tailgate" for MU Football games, though with less liquor said Mike Doak.

Springer plans to use the property as her retirement home and it is regularly open again for family use. The most recent was to memorialize another family matriarch, Barbara Ann (Doak) West, who died in March. The memorial service was held on June 1, which would have been her 99th birthday. Upwards of 35 people visited the house over a two-day period.

The Doak family has strong Columbia connections. Several of Doak's children and grandchildren attended the University of Missouri, and Doak once worked for the Columbia Tribune from the 1950s to 1975, including when it was at its former Cherry Street location.

Memories of Grace; home improvements

One key memory Gray had of Doak was "she was a stickler for the English language." This aided her career at the Tribune where she was a proofreader. Before her Tribune career, she was a teacher and taught Latin. This aided her in other ways, Springer said.

"She played a fierce game of scrabble," she said, also sharing a possibly apocryphal story about her time at the Tribune.

It was rumored Doak and the proofreader at the Columbia Missourian would go through each other's papers looking for mistakes not caught.

"Whoever found the most, got a quarter," Springer said. "I just think that's cute. She loved her job."

Many of the family memories were compiled by Doak's daughter Dottie (Doak) Thompson into the book "No One Left to Ask."

"My dad found this house for my granny in 1960. He and one of his other brothers searched for a house for her to live in," Springer said. "My parents always used to say, 'We should have bought granny's house' when she passed. When my parents passed, I thought, 'You know what? I'm going to buy granny's house.' I'm crazy about this house."

While some the family is spread out across the country, there still are many in Missouri, including Springer's sister, who lives in Lenoir Woods.

Springer is working both locally and remotely on improvements to the house. The siding is original as well as the windows, but are in need of replacement. She'd also like to make landscaping and back- and side-yard privacy improvements. Walls in the home could serve as family memory museum walls with photos and more.

"It's a lot of work but we'll do it bit by bit," Springer said.

Memories of Barbara

A big reason for the recent family gathering was to look back on the life of West. She and her husband, Melvin, have deep connections to the United Methodist church. Following the couple's graduation in 1947 from MU, they would establish a farm in Jasper County, but a calling to the religious life meant Melvin would attend Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, Texas, in 1959.

The Wests would return to Columbia in 1965 establishing a mission outreach program. Barbara West would eventually help found the Fun City Youth Academy for disadvantaged youth, which now has connections with Columbia Public Schools. In 1986, she was part of the Teddy Bear Project, gathering stuffed animals for youth impacted by the Chernobyl disaster.

Their charitable work led to a friendship with former President Jimmy Carter and Habitat for Humanity.

"It was really the memorial of Barbara (Doak) West that brought us all together," Gray said, adding her daughter Susan is moving back to Columbia. West is also survived by her husband, Melvin.

Charles Dunlap covers local government, community stories and other general subjects for the Tribune. You can reach him at cdunlap@columbiatribune.com or @CD_CDT on Twitter. Subscribe to support vital local journalism.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Granny's house: Doak family able to purchase matriarch's home