After nearly 60 years in Perry, Donna Emmert will soon return to her native Kansas, and a large group of her friends gathered Friday morning at the Courtyard Cafe to wish her well in her next adventure.
Donna Mae Himes was born in Navarre, Kansas, which today has a population of 52. The village was about an hour from McPherson, Kansas, so she naturally attended McPherson College after high school.
It was as an undergraduate at McPherson in the early 1960s that a textbook for one of Donna’s classes was late arriving at the college bookstore. She returned so many times to check on the book that one of the clerks at the store became friendly with her. The clerk was Roger Emmert, and the couple were married in Navarre in 1965.
After a few more years of schooling, Donna and Roger moved to Perry in 1968, where he taught math at Perry High School, and she was the librarian and history teacher at Central Dallas High School. Donna took on the job of head librarian at the Perry Public Library in 1971, and she retired as the library’s director in 2008.
“I still have a lot of old friends and classmates in Kansas,” she said Friday. Roger passed away in 2018, but Donna’s son Burke will be nearby in Kansas to help with the transition. Her son Brock lives in Indiana, and her daughter, Joy, lives in Waukee.
In addition to her library duties, Donna also led the bell choir for many years at the Panther Creek Church of the Brethren, and she often entertained on the piano at local events in Perry.
