We knew it was coming. She was 94 today. She waited until about 10:00AM when she would normally have been in church.
I think she had a good life. My two sisters drafted and we all edited this obituary.
Note that Aunt Ruthana, her surviving sibling, originally the eldest, will turn 101 this year.
Catherine J. MacDonald, age 94, died Lincoln, NE, Feburary 9, 2014. Born on a farm at the edge of Fairbury on February 9, 1920, at 16 she became Miss Fairbury. She put herself through secretarial school during the Great Depression. She married Cliff Hillegass in 1939. During WWII Cliff enlisted in the Army Air Corps, and they moved to Chicago where Cliff studied meteorology and Catherine did clerical work for the Manhattan Project, unaware of the purpose of the top-secret project. Later in the war they moved to Monroe, Louisiana, where Cliff taught meteorology to navigators and their first child was born. When the war ended they returned to Lincoln where two more children were born.
Catherine was the co-founder of Cliff’s Notes, launched in 1958, with her husband. While Cliff worked at Nebraska Book Company, Catherine operated the fledgling publishing company out of the basement of the family home. In the first few years she shipped over a million Cliff’s Notes with a tiny staff including her three children.
After 27 years of marriage, Catherine and Cliff divorced. Catherine married Dr. Frank M. MacDonald in 1967, and moved to Bloomington, MN. They retired to a home they built outside of Bayfield, WI. Upon her second husband’s death, Catherine returned to Lincoln.
Catherine was a lifelong nature lover, a bird watcher, and gardener who ultimately cultivated 350 varieties of iris in 65 raised beds. She loved every kind of handwork from sewing, dying and spinning wool, and weaving to carpentry. She learned about plumbing and tiling to remodel a bathroom.
She was a Cub Scout den mother and leader of a Camp Fire Girls group. She sang in the Lincoln Cathedral Choir and the Lincoln Symphony choir and was active in the Lincoln Symphony Guild. She also sang in church choirs throughout her life, well into her 80s. She volunteered at Bryan Memorial Hospital and was active in its Pink Ladies organization. She edited the Nebraska Centennial First Ladies’ Cookbook.
Preceded in death by her parents Clarence James and Edna Ellen Galbraith, her husband Dr. Frank MacDonald, her brother George Galbraith, and her sister Maxine Galbraith.
Survived by her sister Ruthanna Chase, her son James C. Hillegass, daughters and sons-law Linda Hillegass and Jim McKee, and Diane and Michael Nolan, step-sons and daughters-in-law Larry and Julie MacDonald, and Daniel and Kim MacDonald, grandchildren, great grandchildren, nieces and nephews.
Services private. Memorials to Chet Ager Nature Center.
