A history of Dory DeAngelo is not only noteworthy for her accomplishments but also a retelling of the  visionaries that shaped Kansas City’s  theater, social, musical and architectural heritage and in whose footsteps she walked.   She credits her father, Pete DeAngelo, who played the trombone in vaudeville and marching bands, with her love of music and of Kansas City folklore.  Her writing career was encouraged by Sister Corine Joyce, at her alma mater, Glennon High School. Her love of theater, was shaped under the tutelage of Dr. Patricia McIlrath, the founder of the Kansas City Repertory Theater, and ultimately the Missouri Repertory Theater.   She met her life-long friend, John Bilyeu, the first TV announcer at KMBC-TV, on the live Noon show.   Richard Berger, who started the Starlight Theater, introduced her to backstage technical direction when, she later admitted, she didn’t have a clue about stage management.  She met her life-long friend and mentor Phil Derosia, when he was the set designer for the Starlight.   Russell Patterson, one of the founders of the Lyric Opera, gave the young Dory an opportunity to learn stage managing and directing and sent her on the road, touring with the company across Missouri. 

Her childhood infatuation with movies, music and theater led to a multifaceted career in the arts, both backstage and in front of the lights.  Her early career was in the theater, where she acted, at the Circle Theater, Kansas City University Playhouse, Coach House, and directed stage productions at Avila College, Theater in the Park, St. Mary’s University, and the Barn Theater.  She was the stage manager for the Lyric Opera and the Civic Ballet for over seven years.  Thirty-nine theater programs are on file at the Missouri Valley Room from local Kansas City productions, where she acted, stage managed and directed. 

Dory would say that, “when one door closes, another opens.  Keep open to the encounters and coincidences that lead you to another path.”  Starting in the mid-‘60s, she began her writing career in earnest, publishing regular columns for The Squire, with Tom Leathers as publisher and went on to pen regular columns in Northeast World, Kansas City Star and Times, KC Life Downtown, Labor Times and 12 other local news papers and magazines all on file at the Missouri Valley Room.    She credits her interest in her own neighborhood to her years as the co-editor of The Northeast World with Linda Overbey where she published over 100 articles about the theaters that were more numerous than the churches, the beautiful houses of the railroad barons, the luxury hotels built by brewers and the melting pot of immigrants, our own Ellis Island as she described it.

Between 1980 to 1990, she authored and published 5 books about Kansas City and its famous and in-famous characters, neighborhoods and architectural wonders.  With her writing partner Jane Flynn, an architectural preservationist, she published a seminal history of Kansas City’s architecture, “Kansas City Style:  As Seen through its Lost Architecture.” 

For the last ten years of her professional life, she continued to add to the historic and civic record of Kansas City, conducting research for the biography of Ewing Kauffman, history of the railroads in Kansas City for the renovation of the Union Station, the history of the existing buildings for the Power and Light district projects,and the World War I museum collection.  She was commissioned to photograph the city’s historically significant buildings, which are on file at the Missouri Valley Room of the Kansas City Public Library, as are hundreds of speeches she gave on Kansas City History.  She loved nothing better than educating a new generation of Kansas Citians about the theaters, the parks, the neighborhoods, and the amusement parks of their hometown saying “I see the city’s history as a panoramic epic on a giant stage of time...a drama full of interesting characters and events…All those people are waiting in the wings to tell their story and it is my privilege to put it down on paper for future generations.”