Betty Arlene Choquette

Creative, caring, one-of-a-kind Betty Arlene Choquette of Upland, Nebraska, passed away on Dec. 5, 2025, at Brookestone Gardens in Kearney. She was 79. Funeral Mass will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Friday, December 12, 2025, at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Minden with Fr. Evan Winter and Fr. Douglas Dietrich officiating. Visitation with family present will be held from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, December 11, 2025, at the church with Rosary service at 6:00. Private family interment will be held at St. Anne Catholic Cemetery in Campbell. In lieu of flowers, please make blood or platelet donations to the Nebraska Community Blood Bank or to your local blood bank. Memorial contributions can be made in Betty’s honor to help the first responders of the Campbell Fire Department, c/o Amie Choquette, P.O. Box 265, Campbell, NE, 68932, or to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Arrangements are under the care of Craig Funeral Home in Minden. Betty was born on March 22, 1946, in Loup City, Neb., to Floyd P. and Agnes J. (Hurt) Kaslon, as their second of five children and their oldest daughter. Betty Arlene was baptized and confirmed at St. Francis Catholic Church in Ashton, Neb., and received her First Communion on Nov. 1, 1955. She cherished her education in grades 1-8 at the St. Francis Catholic School and graduated from Ashton High School in 1964. Growing up on a family farm meant a lot of hard work all year long. Outdoor chores included milking cows every day before and after school, gathering eggs and moving irrigation pipe. Indoor chores including cooking, baking and sewing – Agnes was a talented seamstress and quilter – and Betty adored working side-by-side with her mother. Betty was proud of her Polish/Czech heritage and enjoyed playing the accordion. Betty was the first in her family to attend college. She wanted to be an architect but was told by the college that it wasn’t a career for girls; she graduated from Kearney State College in 1968 with a degree in vocational home economics. She maintained a lifelong interest in home design, drawing and painting. Despite working several jobs to help pay for college, she found time to be active in the campus Newman Center, where she met the love of her life, James “Jim” Choquette, a fellow farm kid studying to be an earth science teacher. On the cool, sunny morning of August 17, 1968, she married Jim Choquette at St. Francis Catholic Church in Ashton, with the ceremony followed by a full afternoon and evening of polka dancing. The couple enjoyed the mountains and lakes around Estes Park, Colo., for their honeymoon. She taught one year at Holstein High School and coached volleyball before they started their family in Minden, Neb., where Jim was teaching. When he decided to return to farming and ranching, they moved to live on his family homestead southeast of Upland, Neb. They were lifelong parishioners at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Minden. With three children born in four years – Kenzie, Kara and JT – Betty was a busy homemaker, wife and mother. The 70s and 80s were filled with helping Jim on their family farm, gardening, sewing, cooking, canning, painting, family canoe trips on the Republican and Platte rivers, and providing growth and opportunity for their kids by reading them countless books, taking them to music and swimming lessons, and supporting their participation in various school, church and 4-H activities. She and Jim also enjoyed taking their family on many fun and educational trips – mainly across Nebraska and mountain locations in Colorado, but also tours to South Dakota, Kansas and Disneyland. She and Jim fully supported their kids as they each spent one year abroad as foreign exchange students. Betty was a truly creative person who always had a project underway or planned. She designed the new ranch-style home the family moved into on the farm in 1980 and its uniquely practical custom kitchen. Her creative talents were most exemplified through baking, and she was known for her amazing rolls and breads as well as for the delicious, elaborate and beautiful wedding cakes she made for several lucky couples. Betty baked and decorated a unique cake for each of her children’s birthdays and made special cakes and meals for many other extended family occasions. Always an educator, Betty was a pioneer in teaching adult education classes about how to use this new thing in the 1970s called a “microwave oven” to cook and bake. She also loved entertaining friends and family, traveling, and helping others in any way she could, from providing a listening ear to providing medical advice to quietly helping families in need. Betty enjoyed being a homemaker, but her ongoing desire to learn – and her approaching “empty nest” – led her back to what was now called the University of Nebraska-Kearney to pursue a master’s degree in school counseling, which she completed in 1989. She was the interim school counselor at Holdrege, Nebraska, for one semester in spring 1990 before becoming the Minden High School guidance counselor for the next 17.5 years. She thoroughly loved working with hundreds of high-school students, parents and teachers over her counseling career, and was so grateful to work with immensely talented assistant Jayne Hoban. Mrs. Choquette always encouraged students to dream big and work hard to achieve their goals, and she took the time to personally visit all kinds of educational institutions and military facilities so she would be better able to advise students as they looked ahead to their next chapters. Many of her former students sought Mrs. Choquette out over the years to thank her for her dedication and support. Betty chose to retire from MHS in June 2007 to spend more time with Jim; with her remaining parent, her mother; and with her only granddaughter, Corinne. Grandma especially adored taking care of baby Corinne and then working with growing-up Corinne on all kinds of creative art, sewing and cooking projects. Grandma was so happy that Corinne inherited her love of baking and her cake decorating skills. Some of Betty’s happiest moments in her later years involved spending time with her dear granddaughter. In 2019, Betty was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a condition she managed well thanks to Jim and thanks to her courage, strong faith, caring family and friends. By early 2025, she was regularly at the Nebraska Medicine Buffett Cancer Center in Kearney for treatment, with Jim faithfully at her side. She and her family deeply appreciated her entire medical team at Buffett and at the Kearney Regional Medical Center and all that they did to help her stay healthy and strong for as long as possible, as well as appreciated the generous blood and platelet donors of Nebraska. They are truly blessed. Betty is remembered with so much love by her husband of 57 years Jim Choquette; son JT Choquette; daughter Kara Choquette (John Alden); daughter Kenzie Choquette (Terry Heinrich) and granddaughter Corinne Wolfe; cherished siblings Debbie Lantz, Pam Koch (Mark Koch) and Tom Kaslon (Shirley Kaslon); brother-in-law Dennis Choquette; sister-in-law Julene Margritz; sister-in-law Marcene Kaslon; and many beloved nieces, nephews, cousins, neighbors and friends. She was preceded in death by her parents, Floyd P. and Agnes J. (Hurt) Kaslon; brother Jerome Kaslon; parents-in-law Phil V. and Angela E. (Morin) Choquette; brother-in-law Charles Margritz; and sister-in-law Ruth Choquette. Her grandparents were Francis “Frank” and Theophila (Wojtalewicz) Kaslon and Edward and Anna (Jerabek) Hurt, all of Ashton, Neb. Tributes and memories can be shared with the family at www.craigfunerals.com.

Betty Arlene Choquette

March 22, 1946 - December 5, 2025