Kathleen "Connie" Doran

SUN PRAIRIE-Kathleen Emma Louise Miller Doran passed away peacefully at home on November 29, 2021. She was known as “Connie” to her many family members and friends. She was universally liked and admired by all who were fortunate enough to know her. She was born in a small town in upstate New York as the only child of Edward J Miller, a lineman for the New York Central Railroad, and Bertelle Reese, a homemaker.

She graduated from Cortland State Teachers College where she majored in physical education. She loved sports of all varieties including playing golf and following the athletic exploits of the Wisconsin Badgers and the Green Bay Packers. Two days before she passed, she asked “How did Aaron Rodgers do?”

She met her husband Kenneth Thompson Doran at her first teaching assignment in Roscoe, NY. She stated that he was going with another teacher but started dating Connie "because I had car." Being a beautiful eligible bachelorette didn't hurt either. They were married in 1942 shortly before Ken went overseas in World War II. As difficult as it would have been to see your newly married husband go to war thousands of miles away, she said "that's just what we all did."

After he returned safely, he and Connie became the parents of two sons, Christopher Miller Doran and Eric Arthur Doran. She subsequently went back to school and received two masters’ degrees, one in education and one in remedial reading. When her sons went off to college, she began teaching reading in inner-city Albany, New York. She was always devoted to serving others, teaching English as a second language to Asian neighbors and reading newspapers and magazines to the blind over the radio. She reveled in the history of the National Bicentennial Celebration often dressing up in colonial costume and portraying an early American woman to the local community. She served as a Cub Scout den mother and was an avid supporter of anything that her sons would do. She was creative often drawing her own greeting cards, taking art lessons, and playing the electric organ.

She was devoted to her family above all else including not only her sons but five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. She was an excellent cook of German food celebrating her German heritage and was a connoisseur of ice cream and chocolate. She lived a long and full life to the age of 103 remaining mentally sharp right up to her death.

The family offers special thanks to the staff at Highland Park assisted living, Senior Helpers of Madison and the Brighton Hospice staff all of whom made the last decade of her life comfortable and smooth.

Private services for Connie will be held.