Shirley A. Cater

June 20, 1921 - March 30, 2013

Shirley A. Cater, age 91 of Ogallala, passed away on Saturday, March 30, 2013 at her home. Shirley was born June 20, 1921 at Ansley, Nebraska, the daughter of Arch and Maebel (Anderson) Turpen. She attended Ansley Public Schools, graduating from high school when she was 16. The following year she began classes at Kearney State Teacher’s College, where she received a two-year teaching certificate in 1941. She moved to Ogallala to be near her sister, Margaret O. Keller, and taught third grade in the Ogallala Public Schools for two years. For an adventure in the summer of 1941 she went to California and worked at McKesson & Robbins pharmaceutical company. She returned to Ogallala in the fall of 1943 and worked for a year in the office of School Superintendent Harold West. The next summer she joined the United States war effort and was sent to Hill Field in Utah, where she learned to work on airplanes. After the war she attended the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and worked in Omaha before returning to Ogallala and began working for the First National Bank. She married Robert A. Cater of Kansas City on February 7, 1947 in North Platte. He had come to Ogallala with the Cater Electrical Construction Company, which in the 1940’s and early 1950’s built electrical power lines in Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado for the Federal Rural Electric Administration. Shirley was a homemaker for many years and returned to work at the First National Bank (now Pinnacle Bank) in 1970, where she was the head teller at the drive-in-bank. She retired in 1986. Shirley was a member of CL P.E.O. She loved to read and play bridge. She belonged to many bridge clubs over the years and played regularly until about a year before her death, when her health began to fail. She loved work puzzles and cryptograms, working several of them every day. Survivors include two daughters, Andrea Meismer and husband Dan of Paxton and Christie Nelson and husband Michael (OJ) of Lincoln, NE; one son, Curt Cater of Ogallala; three grandchildren, Drew Meismer and wife Michaela of Lincoln, NE, Libby Nelson of Washington DC, and Laura Nelson of Los Angeles, CA; and a great-grandson Maddax Meismer of Lincoln, NE. She was preceded in death by her husband R.A. Cater, one sister, Margaret Keller and one brother, Clinton Turpen. The family has chosen cremation and will conduct a private memorial service at a later date. A memorial has been established in her memory. Online condolences may be sent at gubserfuneralhome.com. Gubser Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.