Donna Joan (McCandless) Carothers

Donna Carothers, 91, died June 29 at the Good Samaritan nursing home in Beatrice, Neb.

Donna was a Lincoln, Neb. native who loved to dance, and who owned her own dance studio and who earned a business degree from the University of Nebraska. She gave up that life path to marry her husband of 59 years, Paul Carothers, and to raise their four children.  Paul preceded her in death in 2014 and Donna insisted that their tombstone in his hometown of Broken Bow, Neb. Identify them as the parents of Anne, Paul, Alan and Andrew. She viewed raising her children as her life’s most important work.

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.  Hers was the happy childhood of an upper middle-class family that always had a car and a telephone in the home, even during the Depression years.  That life changed when Donna was 13 and her father, Conrad, died. 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.

Donna was a successful businesswoman when she met Paul. They married in 1955, shortly after Paul graduated from Peru State College with a teaching and coaching degree. They lived in several Nebraska towns as Paul worked in increasingly larger school districts as a successful football coach and Social Studies teacher, beginning in Hooper, Neb. and 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, Neb. , 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 after her children were all in school in Gordon, Neb.

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 and Beatrice attorney Andrew Carothers and his family.

Donna is survived by her four children and two daughter-in laws: Anne Carothers-Kay of Des Moines, Iowa; Paul Carothers of the Houston, Texas area; Andrew and Lynn Carothers of Beatrice; and Alan and Christina Carothers, recently of South Sioux City and now Lincoln, Neb.

She also has seven grandchildren: Meagan Mostrom and Evan Kay of Des Moines; Cate and Sarah Carothers of Lincoln and Mallory Carothers, a student at Wayne State College; and Emily and Allison Carothers of Beatrice who are students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

A funeral service will be held at the Beatrice Presbyterian Church at 10 a.m. Tuesday, July 5. There will viewing at Harman-Wright Mortuary with the family greeting friends 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. There will be a viewing for the family an hour before the service and a lunch at the church afterwards. She will be buried next to her husband in Broken Bow Cemetery. A graveside service will be held there at approximately 4 p.m. Tuesday. Arrangements are being handled by Harman-Wright Mortuary, Beatrice. Memorial contributions may be made to the Family’s Choice.

 Service Information