Doris (Manahan) Rohrbaugh

Alexandria, Pa.

 

 

 

            EHS classmates Doris Manahan and George Rohrbaugh have been a pair since senior-prom month of 1954.  They married in 1957 and have two educated redheaded daughters, an IBM son, and four active grandchildren.  Doris is a professional artist and George is a physicist/inventor with his own engineering company.  They’ve lived in Gettysburg, Lancaster, State College (ten years), and Alexandria PA (thirty-three years).

 

                Doris’s favorite EHS teacher was Mary Menges, who helped her become a Doubleday proofreader.  After the first year of work Doris afforded art education at Indiana State Teachers College (IUP) for three semesters, then continued at Doubleday through most of 1958, until George graduated from Gettysburg and began his work for Hamilton Watch Company in Lancaster.  They started their family there and later, with three teenagers and a sole-proprietor-husband at home, Doris returned to college (Juniata) and graduated summa cum laude in 1981 with a Fine Arts BA.

 

                In twenty-five years Doris has painted thousands of canvases and watercolors, woven over two thousand one-of-a-kind art baskets, and pioneered pinhole photography with paint.  She’s won hundreds of juried-show awards, taught at Penn State and Juniata College, and earned accreditation in the Pennsylvania Watercolor Society and the Pittsburgh Watercolor Society.  She works with the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Huntingdon County arts festivals, and the Hartslog Heritage Museum.

 

                Now interested in genealogy and handmade books, Doris is tracking the Cherokees in her family.  “I’ve always wondered why I can’t pass by bark without wanting to do something with it.”