Softball Tournament Helps Family Of Beloved Lindsay High School Teacher

The bases were loaded in Lindsay this weekend. Thirty teams took their cuts at the Griffith Sports Complex.

It was all for a great cause. Proceeds from the softball tournament benefitted the family of Dovie Bakewell, a Lindsay High School art teacher who recently passed away from breast cancer.

"The community will turn out for this, and they'll all be here to support her and that family," said Lindsay High School Principal Chuck Karpe.

Lindsay resident and softball coach Shelby Snow took the lead in organizing the tournament, and it quickly caught on.

The turnout didn't shock anyone that knew Dovie.

"It doesn't surprise me at all, because she did, she touched so many lives," said Macy Morris, one of Dovie's former students. 

Macy is one of those lives.

Dovie was her art teacher at Lindsay, and later became a friend, when Macy started working as a hairdresser and cut Dovie's hair.

"We always talked about ‘The Bachelor Forever’, every season, ‘who's your favorite?’ She was always laughing, always smiling, and she just made you feel like you were the most talented artist in the world or the best person in the world. She was just the best kind of person," said Morris.

Dovie leaves behind her husband Daniel and two sons.

But this weekend was a celebration of the always smiling, Bachelor-loving teacher, who left an indelible mark on this Lindsay community.

"Her legacy will be that of love more than anything," Karpe said. "Not just for her family, but for her students and the way she conducted herself on a daily basis."

"She changed a lot of people's lives and attitudes and she made people into who they are today," Morris said. "What a life to live to have touched so many people, and that was her life."