Karen Marjorie Schneider (née Nelson) passed into eternity on August 20, 2023 after a painful battle against multisystemic metastatic cancer. She was born on September 19, 1947 to J. Dennis and Audrey Nelson of rural Ceresco, Nebraska, becoming a 4^th Generation Swedish-American farmer. She grew up an only child in a little, yellow farmhouse surrounded by The Good Life, with her Shetland pony, Gloria, and her Blue Australian Shepherd, Ringo, as her closest companions.

She met her husband, Norman Schneider of Dorrance, Kansas, one fateful day during the Summer of 1967. The young veterinarian was in Nebraska working an internship under Wahoo’s own Doc Little. When Little asked his protégé, “Hey, Doc, you wanna meet a hot blonde?” the duo headed out to the Nelson farmstead and nearly ran over Karen and her horse in Little’s Pontiac. Norman asked Karen to go fishing with him, and he had her, hook, line, and sinker. They were married a year later on July 1, 1968, after many, many fishing and hunting trips.

Norman entered the United States Airforce as a commissioned officer the same year they were married. The new couple immediately shipped out together, heading to the untrodden hinterlands of Goose Bay, Labrador, where Karen began working for the military as well, initially as clerical staff at the base school before moving up into the Security Police and Personnel offices. After two years, also including many fishing trips, they returned to civilization while Norman finished a graduate degree in veterinary toxicology at The Ohio State University. Karen attempted to earn a degree as well, but found the options pushed upon women at the time were so banal and tedious, she didn’t want to finish. If only the advisory staff had pointed her in the direction of Botany or Horticulture!

Karen and Norman spent the remainder of the ‘70s stationed at various military bases across the Eastern United States, ranging from Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland to Wright-Patterson Base in Dayton, Ohio. They returned to Nebraska in 1979, just in time for Karen to give birth to the couple’s only child, a son she gave her maiden name of Nelson. They built a new house on an abandoned farmstead right next door to Karen’s childhood home, ensuring that Nelson would see his grandparents nearly every day growing up.

With Norman in a new tenured position at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln’s Veterinary Diagnostic Center, Karen was free to pursue her own interests, in addition to being a legendary housewife and mother. She became a Master Gardener for the University of Nebraska – Lincoln Extension Office, a member and eventually President of the Nebraska Rose Society, a decades-long fixture of the Lincoln Flower Arrangers’ Guild, and a Master Flower Show Judge for the National Council of Garden Clubs, remaining an emeritus judge until her untimely death.

Karen leaves behind her bereaved son, Nelson, a Blue Australian Shepherd/Heeler mix named Barkley, and a Norwegian Forest Cat named Mao who will miss her every day for the rest of their lives. She was the embodiment of Hestia, Goddess of Hearth and Home; Demeter, Goddess of Agriculture and Growing Things; and Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt. The world is a less colorful place without her.