Carole was born on the 26th of December, 1937 in Story City, IA, a small town 10 miles north of Ames. She was the middle child and only daughter of Everett and Garnette Anderson. They named her Carole with an ‘e’ because she was their little Christmas Carole. Although life took her away from her beloved Story City, she visited often and was a devoted daughter. 

 After she graduated from high school, Carole took nurses training in Des Moines. During her training she met her life partner Lee who was an engineering student at Iowa State in Ames. They were set up on a date by Lee’s friend Don, who together with his wife Linda became lifelong friends of the couple. After graduation, Lee and Carole moved to Germany where Lee was stationed in the Army. Going from Iowa to Europe was a big adjustment, but Carole and Lee adapted quickly and used their free time to travel all over Europe in a VW bug.  When they moved back to the states, Lee went to grad school at Purdue and Carole worked as a nurse until she had their first child, my husband Doug. After Lee graduated, he got a job with Dupont, and they were transferred a few times before they settled in the Wilmington, DE area. Two years after Doug was born, their daughter Cathy arrived, and 6 years after that their youngest Brad was born. Carol went back to nursing when Brad started school. In 1982, Carole was diagnosed with breast cancer. After surgery and radiation therapy, she was in remission and volunteered with patient and survivor groups. In the mid-nineties, Lee and Carole moved to their dream home in Evergreen where they lived until 2023 when they moved to Windcrest Senior Community in Highlands Ranch.

These biographical facts point to a picture of a wife, mother, and caregiver, but I will fill in that image with impressions of Carole from family and friends. I first met Carole 32 years ago. I remember I was so nervous. I grew up in backwoods Wyoming, and she was from the east coast which seemed very sophisticated to me. The first time we met was on a ski trip here in Colorado. We were riding up to the tunnels in a minivan, and the traffic was horrible. Between the nerves, the exhaust smoke, and the stop and go, I became carsick. I was so embarrassed, but Carole helped me through it. She was so kind about the whole thing that I relaxed and actually enjoyed the rest of the day. That was how she always was with me, kind and supportive. She once overheard me singing to the kids and told me that I had a beautiful singing voice. I realized that she might be a bit hard of hearing, but later I realized that she was encouraging me to be happy and not worry so much about what others thought. 

That was a commonality among everyone I talked to. Carole was kind and supportive. She was from a small town in Iowa, so although she lived on the east coast, she remained Iowa nice. She sent cards to people for every occasion and always remembered thank you notes. She was gracious, friendly, and sincere. The fact that she had so many life-long friends reflected this. 

Her friend Linda said this:
I first met Carole in the spring of 1963 when she and Lee, and Don and I were all living in Wilmington, DE. Through the years we have remained friends. Since we were both married in October, we always tried to celebrate our anniversaries together. We traveled together in the States as well as other countries. We enjoyed our time together whether we were with the children, dancing, having a glass of wine, or just visiting. It was a great friendship. Carole was a nice, capable, caring lady. She had many talents (golf, skiing, piano, nursing). She was a loving wife and mother. I will always remember the good times we spent together. She was a true friend and I will miss her. Lee jokes that Carole and Linda could spend a week together traveling and never run out of things to talk about.

 Carole was capable. Her nurses training taught her to keep calm and deal with whatever came her way. As Lee traveled extensively with work while their children were small, she got to practice that with her own children and those in the closeknit neighborhood where they lived. As one of their neighbors said, the moms were all glad when a nurse moved into the neighborhood to bandage up the children. Kathleen Gleed VanVickle, the daughter of their next-door neighbor, wrote me that from Carole’s description of her home town, Kathleen “thought Story City sounded just like Oz”, and another neighborhood boy said that he always felt very welcome in their home. 

 Carole was adventurous. She tackled living in Germany as a newlywed head on and embraced traveling first in that VW bug in Europe and later to all seven continents. She especially enjoyed meeting the people and animals of each place they visited. Her special memory was watching a penguin chick hatch in Antarctica. Lee describes how when they first started going to Dupont social functions that involved meeting “the bigwigs”, Carole was worried that she wouldn’t know what to say. She was given the advice to talk to them as she would anyone else and ask about their children. After one such event she remarked, ‘that wasn’t so hard. I like talking about children.’ Her own children say that she was always up for anything. Brad recalls her chasing after their dog Penny when she got loose at his football game. Speaking of football, watching an Eagles game with Carole meant hearing a lot of “Run, Run Run!,” or “Get him!” All the family laugh about how Sunday pot roast was often burned, but Cathy said she learned to like it that way. 

 Carole loved the annual family fishing trip in late spring. She would start getting excited about it in January. While she enjoyed catching and eating walleye, it was the family time she cherished. Whether it was the early days with her parents and brothers Keith and Rick, or later with her children and grandchildren, she was truly happy at the lake. Some of my fondest memories were of her and I sitting on the sofa in the cabin, looking out at the lake with our morning coffee before the rest of the cabin was awake. She would have her puzzle book, and we would sit quietly enjoying the peace and beauty and occasionally ducklings and goslings.

 In later years as she grew weaker and her world shrank to a few rooms and finally to one room, she still managed that amazing smile of hers and always asked about how others were doing. She kept her calendar with all the important dates, and Lee would get the cards out to her friends and family. When she got too weak to speak, she would blow a kiss to us as we left her room at Mill Vista.

 Carole was a gracious, kind, capable, adventurous daughter, sister, wife, mother, aunt, mother-in-law, friend, nurse, grandmother and great grandmother. I will think of her whenever I see a cardinal, an Eagles game, or a beautiful sunrise over a lake. We will miss you Carole.