Dorothy Knight, a 33-year resident of Pacific Palisades and community activist, passed away in her sleep on October 1. She was 82. Born on January 18, 1923 in East Lyme, Connecticut, Knight worked for a graphic arts firm in New York City, where she met her future husband, actor Ted Knight. The couple were married in 1950, and moved around the East Coast as Ted pursued his career in radio and local television. In 1956, they moved to Los Angeles and settled in Burbank before moving to the Palisades in 1974. Ted starred in a number of television shows (“Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Too Close for Comfort”) and Dorothy served as his financial advisor for years. Ted passed away in 1986. Dorothy was an activist by nature, but her two big passions were sustainable agriculture and proper nutrition for children in school. She served on the board of the Price Pottenger Nutrition Foundation in San Diego, a clearinghouse of information on sound nutrition, alternative medicine, humane farming and organic gardening. She actively campaigned for No Oil! (the successful 20-year effort to ban drilling along PCH in Pacific Palisades), and more recently worked on the successful campaign to ban gas-powered leafblowers in Los Angeles. Even when she moved to Park City, Utah, for two years in the late 1990s, she was active in her neighborhood, becoming the landscape enforcer. “She dove into stuff that annoyed her,” recalled her children. “Dorothy was one of our community’s most dedicated unrecognized volunteers,” said her close friend Joan Graves in a letter nominating Dorothy for Citizen of the Year. “She worked diligently over the years on such committees as the Village Green, DASH (the Highlands shuttle) and CAPPY (Citizens Assisting Pacific Palisades Youth.) Her ability to organize, recruit and quietly get the job done benefited every group with whom she worked.” However, in 1993, Dorothy did come out from behind the scenes to receive a Golden Sparkplug award from the Community Council in recogition of work with CAPPY. More recently, Dorothy was active in Palisadians for Peace, and could often been seen sitting at the peace table at the Sunday farmers market on Swarthmore, engaging visitors, both friendly and wary, in conversations about foreign policy. “At my age I should be thinking of rocking chairs, but every time I hear something I get all fired up,” Dorothy told an interviewer in 2003, as she urged her fellow citizens to remember the vision of the Founding Fathers. “We’ve gotten too far away from the constitution. Our country has become corporate America.” Dorothy is survived by her children Ted Knight, Jr. of Thousand Oaks, Elyse Knight (husband Joseph Giardina) of New York and Eric Knight of Pacific Palisades; grandchildren Paige and Tyler Knight of Thousand Oaks and Agoura; sister Norma Bertussi and brother Arthur Clark. A chapel and burial service will be held on Friday, October 7, at 1:30 p.m. at the Wee Kirk o’ The Heather at Forest Lawn in Glendale, 1712 S. Glendale Ave. Friends are invited to a reception at Dorothy’s home in the Highlands, 1390 Avenida de Cortez, at 4:30 p.m. Friday. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Dorothy Knight’s name to Greenpeace, 702 H Street, N. W, Suite 300, Washington, D. C. 20001 or Palisadians for Peace, c/o Martha Dresher, 934 Las Pulgas, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272.
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