Donna Dee Chastain Roberts ascended peacefully to the Abhá Kingdom shortly after 11:00pm the evening of 16 June 2022 after a difficult seven year battle with cancer.
Donna, daughter of Lloyd Watson Chastain and W. Maurine Cisney, was born 22 January 1939 in St Elizabeth's Hospital, Lincoln, Nebraska. She married William Cole on 10 August 1958 in Shenandoah, Iowa and they had three children Gerald, Christopher and Leslie.
In October 1965 Donna became a member of the Bahá'í Faith in Lincoln, Nebraska. She has served on the Local Spiritual Assemblies of Oshkosh, Brown County, and De Pere, Wisconsin.
One of Donna's passions was writing poetry. She was the co-founder of a ladies poetry journal Primipara in 1974. She has also been published in Lyrical Iowa many times and in several other publications.
She worked for after school programs for various age groups developing curricula and teaching. She directed a children's play, written by the children, concerning the ridiculousness of prejudice and bigotry.
Donna was Graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay in 1982 with a BA in Regional Analysis with an emphasis on Environmental Psychology. This field deals with spacial relationships in architecture, ways to make a good visual design better for human interaction and traffic flow.
She wrote a weekly column for the Oelwein Daily Register for several years called Heart & Home. It was primarily to be a conversational view of events happening around town in the various service organizations. She interspersed that with personal notes about home life, family and history. She was in the process of taking excerpts from her column and journals she had kept over the years to make an autobiography. This work will be continued by her son Gerald, a well known author and playwright in the Chicago area.
Research has found that Donna is 3/4 Huguenot. Her Henson line (father's maternal side) has not yet been connected with Huguenot, however, her Chastain, Cisney and Lewis lines have been.
Donna lived in many places throughout the country. Lincoln, Grand Island, a farm outside Nehawka, North Platte, and Nebraska Wesleyan University, Nebraska; Shenandoah, and Waterloo, Iowa; Raton, New Mexico; Colby, and Salina, Kansas; Oshkosh, Allouez, New Franken, Green Bay, Sheboygan, Milwaukee, and De Pere, Wisconsin; Gadsden, Alabama; and Oelwein, Iowa, not necessarily in that order.
Donna was buried in the New Madison Pioneers Cemetery on 18 June 2022. She was preceded in death by her parents; Lloyd Watson "Tommy Watson" Chastain and W. Maurine "Billie Oakley" (Cisney) Chastain.
Donna Dee Chastain Roberts ascended peacefully to the Abhá Kingdom shortly after 11:00pm the evening of 16 June 2022 after a difficult seven year battle with cancer.
Donna, daughter of Lloyd Watson Chastain and W. Maurine Cisney, was born 22 January 1939 in St Elizabeth's Hospital, Lincoln, Nebraska. She married William Cole on 10 August 1958 in Shenandoah, Iowa and they had three children Gerald, Christopher and Leslie.
In October 1965 Donna became a member of the Bahá'í Faith in Lincoln, Nebraska. She has served on the Local Spiritual Assemblies of Oshkosh, Brown County, and De Pere, Wisconsin.
One of Donna's passions was writing poetry. She was the co-founder of a ladies poetry journal Primipara in 1974. She has also been published in Lyrical Iowa many times and in several other publications.
She worked for after school programs for various age groups developing curricula and teaching. She directed a children's play, written by the children, concerning the ridiculousness of prejudice and bigotry.
Donna was Graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay in 1982 with a BA in Regional Analysis with an emphasis on Environmental Psychology. This field deals with spacial relationships in architecture, ways to make a good visual design better for human interaction and traffic flow.
She wrote a weekly column for the Oelwein Daily Register for several years called Heart & Home. It was primarily to be a conversational view of events happening around town in the various service organizations. She interspersed that with personal notes about home life, family and history. She was in the process of taking excerpts from her column and journals she had kept over the years to make an autobiography. This work will be continued by her son Gerald, a well known author and playwright in the Chicago area.
Research has found that Donna is 3/4 Huguenot. Her Henson line (father's maternal side) has not yet been connected with Huguenot, however, her Chastain, Cisney and Lewis lines have been.
Donna lived in many places throughout the country. Lincoln, Grand Island, a farm outside Nehawka, North Platte, and Nebraska Wesleyan University, Nebraska; Shenandoah, and Waterloo, Iowa; Raton, New Mexico; Colby, and Salina, Kansas; Oshkosh, Allouez, New Franken, Green Bay, Sheboygan, Milwaukee, and De Pere, Wisconsin; Gadsden, Alabama; and Oelwein, Iowa, not necessarily in that order.
Donna was buried in the New Madison Pioneers Cemetery on 18 June 2022. She was preceded in death by her parents; Lloyd Watson "Tommy Watson" Chastain and W. Maurine "Billie Oakley" (Cisney) Chastain.
