Obituary for Donald Liewer
Donald Liewer was born July 23, 1935, on the kitchen table of his family’s home in Osmond, Nebraska, in the middle of a summer thunderstorm. He packed a lot of living into 87 years before his death April 1, in Fremont, from kidney failure.
As a boy, Don helped out at his father’s newspaper, the Osmond Republican, and at his mother’s café. He fished and hunted with his dad, and tended a Victory Garden during World War II. He attended St. Mary’s School in Osmond and played 6-man football at Osmond High School before his graduation in 1953.
Don briefly attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Nebraska State Teacher’s College at Wayne before the Army drafted him and sent him to Bainbridge Island, Washington, to be a fire controlman at a Nike Missile battery.
On Christmas Eve 1955, he met Gail “Cindy” Clough, who worked at the local soda shop and frequently played matchmaker between military men and local young women. Less than a year later they were married during a necessarily short ceremony in a church that was freezing cold because the priest had forgotten to turn on the heat.
Don left the Army in 1957 to study electrical engineering at the University of Washington. By the time he graduated in 1962, Don and Cindy had three children. After their younger son, Greg, died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, they adopted two more, a girl and a boy.
Don worked full time as an aerospace engineer at Boeing for all but four of the next 33 years on projects that included the ALCM cruise missile and the B-2 Spirit bomber, until his retirement in 1995. He was a wizard with tools and could build almost anything, including the family’s stereo and a color television set, and two of the houses they lived in over the years.
Aside from his day job, Don served nearly 30 years as a firefighter and EMT with the Bainbridge Island Volunteer Fire Department. He saved lives and delivered at least one baby aboard a ferry boat. On one ambulance run in 1978, he helped to bring Jon Brower Minnoch (recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s heaviest man) to a hospital in Seattle.
Cindy Liewer died in 1998 following a bout with meningitis. But Don was lucky in love a second time when he was introduced to Tamara Timnick Weber of Lynden, Washington, the following year. She had grown up in Plainview, Nebraska, just eight miles from Osmond, but had moved to the Pacific Northwest to care for her elderly mother.
Don and Tamara were married in January 2000, and they built a new home in Lynden. They shared many adventures, traveling around the country to visit extended family, and escaping each year to Arizona to avoid the wet Washington winters. They traveled to Europe five times. All this even as he endured three bouts with cancer, two knee replacements, back surgery, and kidney disease. He was devoted to the lady he called “M’ honey.”
The couple moved to Fremont last year to be near three of their children. Don passed away peacefully after a short stay in hospice.
Don was preceded in death by parents, Eugene and Cecilia “Sue” Liewer, his first wife, Cindy, and his son, Gregory. He is survived by his wife, Tamara, of Fremont; three sisters; Anita Morrell of Fountain Valley, California; Mary Jane (Duane) Weber of Elloree, South Carolina; and Gloria (Bill) Duenwald, of Hoven, South Dakota; four children; Patricia (Joe) Zuniga of Meridian, Idaho; Steven (Keiko) Liewer of Omaha; Joan Eik of Big Timber, Montana; and Scott Liewer, formerly of Seattle; five stepchildren, Linn (Bill) Golter of Omaha; Barry Weber of Livermore, California; Lori (Bob) Jennings of Fremont, Nebraska; June (Sheldon) Smith of Sedro-Woolley, Washington; and Rod (Michelle) Weber of Weehawken, New Jersey; 10 grandchildren and step-grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren and step great-grandchildren.
Memorial Mass will be 10 A.M., Friday, June 23, 2023 at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Fremont, NE. Family will be receive friends Thursday from 6 P.M. to 8 P.M., with a rosary starting at 7 P.M. at Moser Memorial Chapel in Fremont.
Following the funeral luncheon, the burial will take place at 2:30 P.M. at the Omaha National Cemetery in Omaha, NE.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Catholic Charities of Omaha (www.ccomaha.org) or the Wounded Warrior Project (www.woundedwarriorproject.org).
Live-streaming of the service and be found at: www.mosermemorialchapels.com
As a boy, Don helped out at his father’s newspaper, the Osmond Republican, and at his mother’s café. He fished and hunted with his dad, and tended a Victory Garden during World War II. He attended St. Mary’s School in Osmond and played 6-man football at Osmond High School before his graduation in 1953.
Don briefly attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Nebraska State Teacher’s College at Wayne before the Army drafted him and sent him to Bainbridge Island, Washington, to be a fire controlman at a Nike Missile battery.
On Christmas Eve 1955, he met Gail “Cindy” Clough, who worked at the local soda shop and frequently played matchmaker between military men and local young women. Less than a year later they were married during a necessarily short ceremony in a church that was freezing cold because the priest had forgotten to turn on the heat.
Don left the Army in 1957 to study electrical engineering at the University of Washington. By the time he graduated in 1962, Don and Cindy had three children. After their younger son, Greg, died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, they adopted two more, a girl and a boy.
Don worked full time as an aerospace engineer at Boeing for all but four of the next 33 years on projects that included the ALCM cruise missile and the B-2 Spirit bomber, until his retirement in 1995. He was a wizard with tools and could build almost anything, including the family’s stereo and a color television set, and two of the houses they lived in over the years.
Aside from his day job, Don served nearly 30 years as a firefighter and EMT with the Bainbridge Island Volunteer Fire Department. He saved lives and delivered at least one baby aboard a ferry boat. On one ambulance run in 1978, he helped to bring Jon Brower Minnoch (recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s heaviest man) to a hospital in Seattle.
Cindy Liewer died in 1998 following a bout with meningitis. But Don was lucky in love a second time when he was introduced to Tamara Timnick Weber of Lynden, Washington, the following year. She had grown up in Plainview, Nebraska, just eight miles from Osmond, but had moved to the Pacific Northwest to care for her elderly mother.
Don and Tamara were married in January 2000, and they built a new home in Lynden. They shared many adventures, traveling around the country to visit extended family, and escaping each year to Arizona to avoid the wet Washington winters. They traveled to Europe five times. All this even as he endured three bouts with cancer, two knee replacements, back surgery, and kidney disease. He was devoted to the lady he called “M’ honey.”
The couple moved to Fremont last year to be near three of their children. Don passed away peacefully after a short stay in hospice.
Don was preceded in death by parents, Eugene and Cecilia “Sue” Liewer, his first wife, Cindy, and his son, Gregory. He is survived by his wife, Tamara, of Fremont; three sisters; Anita Morrell of Fountain Valley, California; Mary Jane (Duane) Weber of Elloree, South Carolina; and Gloria (Bill) Duenwald, of Hoven, South Dakota; four children; Patricia (Joe) Zuniga of Meridian, Idaho; Steven (Keiko) Liewer of Omaha; Joan Eik of Big Timber, Montana; and Scott Liewer, formerly of Seattle; five stepchildren, Linn (Bill) Golter of Omaha; Barry Weber of Livermore, California; Lori (Bob) Jennings of Fremont, Nebraska; June (Sheldon) Smith of Sedro-Woolley, Washington; and Rod (Michelle) Weber of Weehawken, New Jersey; 10 grandchildren and step-grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren and step great-grandchildren.
Memorial Mass will be 10 A.M., Friday, June 23, 2023 at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Fremont, NE. Family will be receive friends Thursday from 6 P.M. to 8 P.M., with a rosary starting at 7 P.M. at Moser Memorial Chapel in Fremont.
Following the funeral luncheon, the burial will take place at 2:30 P.M. at the Omaha National Cemetery in Omaha, NE.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Catholic Charities of Omaha (www.ccomaha.org) or the Wounded Warrior Project (www.woundedwarriorproject.org).
Live-streaming of the service and be found at: www.mosermemorialchapels.com