Memorials › Donna Joan McCandless Carothers
Donna Joan McCandless Carothers
30 Mar 1925 – 29 Jun 2016
| Birth | 30 Mar 1925 |
| Death | 29 Jun 2016 |
| Cemetery | Broken Bow Cemetery Broken Bow , Custer County , Nebraska , USA |
| FaG | https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/166250637 |
Bio
Donna Joan Carothers, 91, passed away on Wednesday, June 29, 2016 at the Good Samaritan nursing home in Beatrice, Nebraska. Donna was a Lincoln, Nebraska, native who loved to dance, and owned her own dance studio. She earned a business degree from the University of Nebraska. She married Paul Carothers, and they were married for 59 years before Paul's passing in 2014. She was born Donna Joan McCandless and grew up in a Lincoln neighborhood that was a kid’s paradise. Her family lived in a brick bungalow on “A” Street, within wandering distance of the Children’s Zoo and Lincoln’s Sunken Garden. Donna's father, Conrad, passed away when Donna was 13. Donna and her older brother, Stanley, and her mother, Frances, all worked to keep the family going. Donna, who had taken dance lessons from long-time Lincoln dance instructor Flavia Waters Champ, became her assistant and helped her every day after school and on weekends. Eventually, Donna began teaching dance on her own and had her own studio – a job that helped her put herself through college at the University of Nebraska, where she earned a business degree. Paul and Donna lived in several Nebraska towns for Paul's teaching and coaching, including the districts of Anselmo-Myrna, Gordon, Grand Island, Waverly, and Stanton. During a stint in the 1960s in which Paul left teaching and coaching to farm for a few years in his hometown of Broken Bow, Donna taught ballet, tap and acrobatics to Broken Bow children on Saturdays while raising her young children. Later, she added a teaching certificate to her educational credentials and occasionally was a substitute teacher. In Stanton, the couple turned Donna’s enterprise of a summer ice cream stand across from the city pool into a full-service restaurant and catering business known as The Burger Shoppe, in an old building downtown, which they renovated to include living quarters upstairs. The couple retired to Broken Bow in the late ‘90s, where they lived on a farm for many years, enjoying their pastimes of vegetable and flower gardening, feeding the birds, keeping bees and raising two or three cows a year for grass-fed beef. Later they moved into a house in town. When Paul began suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, the couple moved to the Kensington assisted living apartments in Beatrice to be near their son, Andrew Carothers and his family. Donna is survived by: children, Anne Carothers-Kay, Paul Carothers, Andrew and Lynn Carothers and Alan and Christina Carothers; and seven grandchildren. Funeral on Tuesday, July 5, 2016 at Beatrice Presbyterian Church. Interment in Broken Bow Cemetery. Obituary information from Harman Wright Funeral Home.
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