Born Thanksgiving morning, Nov. 29, 1923, in Barnet, Vt., Dot spent her early years in a loving family with her parents, Edward and Alice Morton Johnson, and her younger brother, Edward.

She attended grade school in Barnet and high school at McIndoes Academy. She graduated from Lynden, a Vermont state college. Dot started her teaching career in 1943 in a one-room school with all eight grades in Comerford, Vt. After teaching in schools in Vermont and Massachusetts, she moved to Alaska with her first husband, Dan Roberts, in 1943. Dot taught school first in the BIA Wrangell Institute, then later in the Wrangell Public Schools until 1970, when she moved to Wasilla, Alaska, with Ed Frandsen, her second husband.

Dot retired in 1977, and Ed in 1980. She briefly worked for The Frontiersman, a local newspaper, and volunteered for the Iditarod Sled Dog Race and for the Mat-Su Visitors and Convention Center.

Dot and Ed purchased a lot on the Kenai River, where they built a fishing camp and enjoyed many years of salmon fishing and time spent with friends and family. They were also avid gardeners; their dahlias were colorful and exuberant.

In 1986, they bought a cottage on Lake Coeur d’Alene and spent summers there while still living in Alaska, enjoying time with family including Kris and Tom, and Jan and Dick, Ed’s daughters and spouses, and more adventures. They started spending winters in Yuma, Ariz., in 1991; in 1995 they moved out of Alaska permanently. They moved into Leisure Park in Hayden, Idaho, in 2000. Ed died in 2005 in Yuma. Dot continued to spend winters in Yuma, accompanied by daughter Kris and husband Tom, and by their beloved dogs Kushta, Kasaan, Jigger, Duffy and Cody.

Traveled all over U.S. and Canada, many trips over the Alaska-Canada highway in its earlier, unpaved form. They visited Vermont and explored much of the country, including most of the Canadian provinces.