Dona was born August 9, 1936 in San Bernardino, CA and grew up in her family’s orange grove in Fontana, CA. She earned her undergraduate degree from The University of California at Riverside and did her graduate work at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. She met and married her husband of 56 years, Dale, at Northwestern in 1961, after which they moved to upstate New York to begin their teaching careers. Dona taught one year at Hobart and William Smith College in Geneva, NY and then joined the faculty of Nazareth College in Rochester where she served as Chair of Social Sciences for several years before moving with Dale to Kansas City. There, she worked for one year in the admissions office of what was then known as Avila College until her daughter Lisa was born in 1968. In the Fall term of 1968, she joined the Avila Social Science Department, where she taught until she retired as an emerita faculty in 2006 after 38 years of service, serving for 25 years during that time as Chair. She also served on many committees on campus and in the community and brought Elderhostel to Avila for a number of summers, introducing the campus to seniors from around the country who came for courses on Harry Truman, the Santa Fe Trail, and Kansas City Jazz.

In her retirement, Dona loved spending time with family, going on afternoon drives with her husband Dale and listening to music, watching the wildlife that would frequent her backyard, and caring for her beloved cat, Woody, who preceded her in death.

Dona was preceded in death by her father Wayne King and her mother Billie (Hagar) King as well as half-siblings Carl, Mildred, and Eugene. She is survived by her husband Dale of Kansas City; daughter Lisa Neuman, son-in-law Jeff Roggenbuck, and grandson Zane Neuman Roggenbuck of Greenfield Township, Maine; brother Wayne King and sister-in-law Gloria King of Dolores, CO; and cousins, nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews throughout the United States.