At home and at work, she was a dynamo who couldn't help but inspire

Until Saturday, nothing, but nothing, could stop the indefatigable force that was Dorothy Dolphin. A hardscrabble upbringing during the Great Depression, the sudden death of her young husband, the glass ceiling for women in the mid-20th-century business world -- she overcame them all during her 87 years.

"Her energy level was amazing," said her daughter, Kathy Dolphin, on Sunday, a day after her mother's death.

"She never retired. She was giving speeches until age 82. She spoke to tons and tons of women's groups. And when she would lay out how many problems she's overcome in life, that had a way of motivating people."

When Dolphin wasn't building a business empire (banks, fast-food franchises and one of the Twin Cities' foremost staffing companies), Dolphin was inspiring other women to start their own businesses. When she wasn't serving on countless boards, most passionately in higher education, Dolphin was nurturing and prodding her young daughter, one of three children, through a mysterious, debilitating disease.

In 1960, her husband, New Brighton banker Bill Dolphin, died from a malaria-related kidney ailment. Instead of leaning on her family -- her brother, billionaire Carl Pohlad, has repeatedly noted that "she never asked for anything" -- Dorothy went to work selling jewelry, radio ads and even Tupperware before landing a job at Employers Overload. A few years later, Kathy contracted a skin-muscle disease that baffled doctors from here to the Mayo Clinic.

"Dorothy was not gonna quit. She was gonna take us everywhere till she got the answer," said Kathy Dolphin, who spent three years in University Hospital, eventually learning she had something called dermatomyositis. "When I got out and they said I had a 60-40 chance of living three years, she put me in wheelchair and said, 'Kathy, we're never coming back here.'

"It was always tough love with her. She'd say, 'We're not gonna be nurses, so don't think you're gonna ring your little bell and we're gonna come running.' She always gave me inner strength."

During the course of Kathy's illness, Dorothy was working long hours ("She would always sneak into the hospital to see me because she never got done with work before visiting hours were over"). She earned promotions to office manager and then national recruitment director.

Soon she discovered that three men with similar jobs had considerably higher salaries. But rather than complain -- "It wouldn't have done any good to raise a ruckus," she told the Star Tribune in 1989. "You'd just be called a troublemaker" -- Dolphin struck out on her own. Her first company, Dolphin Staffing, grew quickly, and Dorothy soon branched out.

Today her children run the three enterprises: Tom in banking, Gregory with the fast-food franchises and Kathy at Dolphin Staffing. (When the three siblings started working for their mother, she insisted that they start calling her Dorothy because she thought it would be unprofessional for clients to hear a barrage of "Hey, Mom" calls. )

"Dorothy raised three leaders," Kathy Dolphin said, "and the companies were built so we could all have responsibility and work together, but we didn't have to answer to each other. We were more like a spider web than a ladder, always adding on."

While building her own web of businesses, Dolphin also was inspiring others. In the late 1980s, for example, she changed Judy Beyers' life.

"She ran into me at the Lumber Exchange. I was part of an exhibition called Women of Strength," Beyers recalled. "She said, 'Are those your legs?' I said yes. She said, 'Can I have those legs at my age?' "

Shortly after hiring her as a personal trainer, Dolphin began exhorting Beyers to start her own business.

"She started sending her friends to me and mentoring me. Once she believed in you, that was it; there were no excuses for you not to do what she set out," said Beyers, whose Edina firm, Powersource Personal Training, is among the Twin Cities' largest in this field. "She was this tiny, delicate-looking thing, but the power that came out of her was incredible. She's like a force, a powerful energy source, making you believe in your goals and achieving them."

Born Dorothy May Pohlad in West Des Moines, Iowa, Dolphin took a stab at Hollywood stardom before settling in Minnesota. "People looked at her with pleasure," said Dr. Harvey O'Phelan, her companion of the past 18 years. "She was uniquely attractive, with a look that said, 'Look at me, I'm Dorothy Dolphin.' "

She is survived by O'Phelan, her brother, sisters Helen Quinn and Jean White, and her three children, for whom 87 years was not enough. "Her mother lived to be 106," said Kathy Dolphin with a chuckle, "so my mom cheated us."

Bill Ward • 612-673-7643 • bill.ward@startribune.com