She was simply one to note benchmarks of time in even numbers and she liked the concept of what life would look like in the year 2057.
In her lifetime, Doris managed to do what all southern women and mothers of other strong southern women want for their daughters—to shoot for the moon and reach it. Doris was brought up with a love for books, good writing, impeccable spelling, decorum, Southern manners, faith in God, church worship, respect for elders, an appreciation for one’s family roots, a study of her heritage, and one gently charming stubborn streak that powered her to get past barriers, subtle and substantial alike.
We met in 1970, as she was one of 11 students who would cause Keystone School’s 9th grade class to actually have to span six pages of the yearbook that year, as the usually small class sizes experienced a giant growth streak.
In the 1970-71 year alone, Keystone students who were destined for the “best” colleges around the country faced challenges of their own as the waning days of the summer of love, flower power, and the general transition from AM radio to the more unchartered waters of FM broadcasts marked a time in music where you’d find Dean Martin, Motown, The Beatles (at the height of their scraggly look, transcendental meditation and mountaintop contemplations abounding), The Buckinghams, Neil Young, and a few Canadian upstarts including Joni Mitchell were about to hit radio gold.
Doris entered Keystone with a bang. Our multicultural enrollment was real, but small, but then, again, the Class of ’73 had 10 people, the Class of ’75 had 11 people, and here we were, the Class of ’74 with 32 people. Diversity wasn’t just for statistics; it was for real, and it didn’t need to be “practiced.” It was who we all were, a happy little microcosm of people who were meant to be family for the rest of our lives. Naturally there were disagreements at times, but they were healthy, educational, and often funny or peppered enough with humor to make them a learning experience.
Keystone was not a nerd academy; it was a social experiment of understanding, goal-setting, intense study, relentless pursuit of knowledge simply because you were interested in it, and then, a safe place to be smart without ridicule. Most of all, we tried to be kind to one another, despite our similarities and differences. That was basically all you could ask for in the fall and spring of the early 1970s. Politics was as interesting then as it is today, and we all held strong opinions, which were safe to express without fear of retribution or persecution from our superiors, unlike today’s more volatile environment.
In school, Doris was not a fan of science; she preferred history, English, writing, and she tolerated with grace those who were attempting athletic prowess on the basketball court, because she was an avid cheerleader who knew how to get a crowd going. She fit in easily, but it’s more likely that she managed to project a level of ease where there was none.
Her younger cousin, Trena, had been at Keystone from early elementary days, but Doris also had an older sister, Lois Diane, who graduated from San Antonio Edison High School the same year Doris graduated from Keystone. They were devoted to one another; in 2003, Lois Diane was visiting Doris in Massachusetts when she passed away from cardiac complications in her sleep at the age of 47.
Lois Diane WhiteKeystone’s junior and senior proms were important benchmarks and Doris kept good photographs and scrapbooks of those rites of passage as well as our high school graduation ceremony, and shared those in our school alumni postings on Facebook.
Elizabeth Lee Newman Easterlin and Lois Diane White
Prom 1973, Doris and escort Rickey Allen
Brenda Chin Chan
Pam Benzaquen Kilgore, '74 who graduated early in 1973, and Dawn Lee Wakefield
Mr. Boling, Elizabeth Boling and Kathy JohnsonDoris' high school senior picture, May 1974, Keystone School, San Antonio, Texas
More than a supporter of HBCUs, Doris’ mother Lois was an alum of Paul Quinn College in Waco, Lois Diane had enrolled at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama right out of high school, son Stephen Cooper was active (in basketball and academics) at Hampton University in Virginia, and daughter Leigh Alexandra did her doctoral research on HBCUs as her research topic. Doris’ father, Leevester, was a mortician, an avid sports fan and music lover, whose primary career was in civil service working for the U.S. Post Office. She described him as “The best man in the whole USA.”
Proud daddy with his girls.Fittingly, the man she married, jazz bandleader and extraordinary musician, Steven Soares, was the very next best man in her life and they were indeed a perfect match for one another. Grandson Miles Henry rounded out her family and lit up all of their collective lives.
For college, Doris chose Central State University, an HBCU school in Wilberforce, Ohio. She sailed through the academics and social parts of school with grace and ease and was an active soror in Delta Sigma Theta sorority (DST) all of her life, starting with Central State.
Ever a force for good, it surprised no one that Doris would be an attorney in her postcollegiate profession. She represented the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as an Assistant Attorney General in her professional career. Over the years, Keystone reunions would draw most of the 21 of us who graduated in 1974 back to the San Antonio campus built of old Victorian mansions for class-organized reunions in 1985, 1990, 1994, 2014, 2018, and 2024.
(Front L to R) Gloria Muro Shaw'74, M.S. (deceased), Dr. Luke Dones'75, Dr. Jack Kent '73, Prof. and Dean Elizabeth Boling '74, Elizabeth Lee Newman Easterlin '74 M.S. (deceased), Doris Helene White Soares, JD '74 (deceased); (Back L to R) Dr. Burton G. Shaw, Jr. '75 (deceased), Dr. Bernard B. Beard '75 (deceased), Dr. Richard P. Meinig '75, Ross A. (Buddy) Logan '74, Dr. Charles V. Mobbs '74.
Doris managed to get to most of these reunions, despite the distance from her home in Boston. Roots and tradition were important to her, plus her mother and sister still lived in San Antonio. Steven Cooper was barely 3 months old when I first met and got to hold him for the first time. Doris made being a wife and mother of two and practicing attorney look as easy as anything. Naturally, it was not.
2018 reunion, Doris Soares, Kathy Johnson, and Mary Newell PapeIn recent years Doris relocated her family and returned to San Antonio as home base to provide oversight and gentle care of her beloved mother, Lois, who lived to age 99, and resided finally in the most exquisite of senior living communities under Doris' perfect supervision. She composed and delivered the most beautiful tribute to her mother when the time came, showing her strength above personal loss.
Mrs. Lois WhiteIt seemed she had only five minutes between losing her mother and a diagnosis of her own cancer. Talk about unfair. She didn't ever turn her sorrow or pity inward. She was too much a fighter for that. In between battling chemotherapy she was a fierce force for the San Antonio chapter of DST Alumnae, and she continued mentoring other young women with hopes and dreams while setting an example for her own family on how to cope with life in faith.
In April this year, thanks to Doris’ insistence on the Class of ’74 doing "something" to mark the occasion of the 50th year since graduation, Karen Cheyney'76 made it happen. They toured the campus and were popular attendees in classes of present-day students who quizzed the seasoned alums about the “old days” of how things used to be.
Doris had been an honored guest in previous years as well on alumni day and inspired more than a few students to achieve dreams, set goals, and work like all get out, relentlessly to reach them, and then to be humble and modest. It's not every Keystonian who can say that they interviewed Alex Haley for the school newspaper when they were a senior in high school. Doris could, and did.
In a perfect world, no one battles cancer alone. Her Keystone family supported Doris with love, communications, and prayers as a strong constituent group that fell in line somewhere in 37th place behind other groups of those who love Doris. Her family was her core group, her faith in God and lifetime of worship gave her strength to develop her motto and mantra, “Armor on, prayers up, Let’s Go!”
The Soares family, son-in-law Marcus Parker, Doris, Miles Henry, Steven, Dr. Leigh, and Steven CooperHer DST sisters, her fellow barristers, her friends from childhood forward, her Jack and Jill alumni, and later parent alumni, on and on, everyone loved Doris.
Read and see Doris’ own words here:
Cervivor Podcast https://www.facebook.com/cervivor/videos/410050134759406
Knowledge + advocacy = survival. The real deal: Black patients have lower survival rates for most cancers, if not all....
In a communication where she was reviewing the list of people (so far at that time) who’d passed away among our group, here’s what she said 9 years ago:
Doris Soares: "Just reading this list (thanks for the link, Dawn Lee). How sad to recall all the changes in the past 41 years since I bid farewell to Keystone. Know that the names and faces of everyone who made up my world there for high school never fade---get blurry, maybe, but never disappear."
True enough, Doris…you are always a permanent part of our happiest memories.
So, today as we sit here we are reminded that if you were active in the faith that Doris had, she believed in God’s perfect timing and plan for all his children, in the hereafter where you are reunited with those who have gone ahead of you and even if you’re not of that mindset, you just know that somewhere in a garden of goodness, where there is love, there is Doris.
For all who believe and count on eternity, a new cheerleader has arrived on the scene, bustling with energy, filled with joy, and 1,212 good ideas. Put her to work, Lord, and when you can spare her a little, please help us by having her keep an eye out on all of us. We could use the backup.
Doris, it was a privilege to know you and call you my fellow Cobra and I thank you for all the shared memories of important times we had. And, for your homegoing soundtrack, let's revisit those happy times where we all had...Pieces of April to hold onto.
Love, Dawn Lee
Here are some of Doris’ writings about her navigation of her journey with cancer. She never fails to acknowledge her core team: husband Steven, daughter Leigh and son Steven Cooper, aka “The best cancer posse in the galaxy” and her “first line of defense.”
https://www.curetoday.com/authors/doris-helene-white
You’ll see photos of Doris on her journey and some of her reflections in her own handwriting.
https://cervivor.org/tag/doris-helene-white/ In her own words:
“This journal is so much more than frequently illegible cursive words. No, these pages are quite often a battle cry, this warrior’s call to arms against the most unexpected enemy: her own cells. These pages are like an old-timey, gutbucket, blues chart from backwoods juke joint—a full-throated, belly-wail of agony and joy, growled by one who knows the score (literally and figuratively) and ain’t afraid to tell you all about it. And, always, always, that hard-cover book is my hymnal, sketching lines of praise to Him in Whose armor I outfit myself every day. This little unassuming book contains uniquely metered lyrics of love and faith and strength.
I will write my way out of this Egypt. The inked lines will chart the path to my Red Sea….”
As a final reminder, she took her civic duty seriously ALL of her life. She voted early in the 2024 election, just to make sure. This photo, while not looking anything like the Doris we know, love, and remember, is one I cherish just as much as any of the others. She did it her way!
With ever an eye on the future...Doris will be watching over, and listening carefully to the arpeggios and allegros of young Miles Henry...the future looks bright!
