Betty Marie Kolar

Betty Wright Kolar Betty Marie Wright Kolar,89, of Kearney died October 27, 2014, at St. John’s Good Samaritan Center in Kearney. Services will be at the Living Faith Fellowship Church in Kearney at 10 a.m. on Friday, November 7, with lunch to follow. A visitation will be held one hour prior to the service. Graveside services will be at 2 p.m. that afternoon in Wolbach, Nebraska, with fellowship to follow at the Wolbach United Methodist Church. The family requests memorial contributions go to Wolbach United Methodist Church, 604 Drummond Ave, Wolbach, NE 68882. Betty was a devoted wife, mother, sister, and aunt, as well as a loving and loyal friend to many. The second of four children, Betty was born in Elm Creek, Nebraska, where her parents farmed and raised their family. She attended a country school before entering Elm Creek High School. Like many others, Betty’s family struggled during the Depression, living without electricity or indoor plumbing, and often with no functioning automobile. Since her mother was frequently ill, Betty did most of the family’s cooking by the time she was 8 years old. She rarely talked about those hard times, but she did remember how the sky turned dark with dirt in the dust storms of the 1930s. After graduating from high school, Betty got a job in Kearney with the State Employment Office as a stenographer, where she worked for the next seven years. She met her husband, Roy Kolar, when he was a student at Kearney State Teachers’ College. He was going to school on the GI Bill after returning from service in World War II. They married in Elm Creek on Feb. 18, 1951; Betty made her own wedding dress, a long-sleeved satin gown with a fitted bodice. Not long after marrying, Betty underwent treatment for breast cancer in Missouri. Among Betty’s photo albums and family mementos is a scrapbook filled with almost 100 get-well cards from that time. In their early years of marriage, Betty and Roy lived in the small town of Cushing, where their two sons were born and Roy worked as a rural mail carrier. The family moved to Roy’s hometown of Wolbach in 1960. Betty was known around town for her baking and cooking skills, and provided cakes for many Wolbach weddings, birthdays and graduations. She was also an expert seamstress, even sewing her son’s suits (and in the 1970s, a caftan for Barry). She learned how to tailor clothes and modify patterns to make clothes fit properly, and frequently did alterations for family and friends (including adding a ruffle to her tall niece Barb’s homecoming gown to make it the right length). Betty was a regular volunteer at the Wolbach United Methodist Church, teaching Sunday School, baking casseroles and pies, planning funeral dinners and doing all the tasks needed to keep a small community church going. She rarely missed her sons’ football or basketball games. Both boys skipped the school cafeteria so they could go home for hot meals every school day. Betty and her husband, a fine carpenter, built several houses in Wolbach. The family went on several long-distance trips to Rural Mail Carriers Conventions, in San Antonio, Knoxville, and Spokane. The joke was always that the carriers came with a ten-dollar bill and a copy of the Ten Commandments, and never broke either one. Her sons remember those trips as big adventures, driving hundreds of miles in the family’s Chevrolet Impala. Roy died suddenly of a heart attack in 1979. Betty stayed in Wolbach another 10 years, working for the Tri County Parish in St. Paul and the Wolbach School District, then moved to Kearney to be closer to her brothers and the amenities of a larger town. She became active in the First Christian Church, played in bridge groups, and made many good friends. Once, when an older friend was dying of emphysema, the friend said her goodbyes but lingered longer than expected. Betty kept going to see her, doing her nails and keeping her company, long after others had drifted away. Betty never flew on commercial airlines until she was in her 60s, when she decided she needed to fly in order to see her sons more frequently. They lived at various times in Texas, North Carolina, and Tennessee. In addition to her husband, Betty was preceded in death by her mother and father, Jesse M. and Grace Rumbeck Wright, her brother Deane Wright, and her sisters-in-law Eddis Wright and Shirley Kolar. She is survived by sons Barry Kolar and his wife Sheri of Nashville, and Dennis Kolar and his wife Crystal of Greensboro, N.C., as well as her brothers Dale Wright and Kenny Wright and sisters-in-law Ilia Wright and Jo Wright, all of Kearney; brothers-in-law Glen Kolar and Earl Kolar and his wife Imogene, sister-in-law Helen Kolar, and numerous nieces and nephews.

Betty Marie Kolar

October 20, 1925 - October 27, 2014