Dolores Carey McElhatton, age 72, of Alexandria, Virginia, and formerly of Stone Harbor, NJ, died on November 11, 2018. When she was born on March 9, 1946, at the Philadelphia Osteopath Hospital, doctors were not sure if she would survive the day. She received Last Rites. But Dolores did far more than survive. For the next 72 years, she showed those whose lives she touched precisely how to live. Dolores was quiet growing up, and there were years when school was hard as she moved around the country with her parents and brother, Joe, and sisters Suzanne and Pat. But she found comfort and conviction in her family, as well as in the advice of her father, whose words she shared almost daily to her own children: Be proud, walk with your shoulders back. In 1971, she married the late James McElhatton, an airline pilot whom she met one night at Gallagher's in Avalon, New Jersey, during a weekend trip to the Jersey Shore. They had three children, James, Ann and Peter. Dolores experienced much joy and adversity. She was struck with a debilitating form of arthritis in her 30s, and it left her struggling to walk at times. And yet, she accomplished so much more than what can be conveyed here. In 2000, she lost Peter to a car accident. In 2005, her husband died of cancer. Thirteen years ago, facing this new life, Dolores could have stepped back and resigned herself to a quiet existence after so much physical and emotional pain. She resisted. Instead, she lived with an urgency and ferocity that comes with the deep faith and conviction that no matter how hard, life truly is a fleeting and wonderful joy. She got a job for the Atlantic County library system for a few years, where she had a reputation as someone whom the neighborhood children could talk to and turn to with problems far bigger than where to find a book. She played this role for many people in life, whether she knew you for decades or just met you. She was a good and true friend. She also was a once in a lifetime mother, wife, sister and aunt, and she especially loved her role as grandmother. She opened her heart and her home to them, and to so many more. And what made her so special is that once you were inside, things just seemed so much better. Dolores was preceded in death by husband James and son Peter. She is survived by son James, Jr., and his wife Jessica and sons Jackson, Sawyer and Max; and her daughter Ann and her husband Colin and daughter Winnie and son Shepherd; her brother, Joseph, and her sisters Pat and Suzanne; and many nieces, nephews, cousins and friends. Funeral Mass will be said on Friday, November 16, 2018 at 11:00 am at St. Brendan the Navigator Parish St. Paul's Church, 99th Street and Third Avenue, Stone Harbor, NJ. Interment will be in St. Mary's Cemetery, Cold Spring. In lieu of flowers and donations, get out there and live like Dolores did. The world needs it.