Menu
Donna Brower
Donna Jean Brower was made new as she went home to be with her loving Savior July 10, 2011, after a brief battle with cancer.
Funeral services will be held at 1 p.m. on Friday, July 15, at Rost Funeral Home, McMurtrey Chapel in Mountain Home. Burial will follow at Mountain View Cemetery in Mountain Home.
Donna was born Sept. 18, 1944, to Charlie and Nita Baker in Baker City, Ore., where she spent her earliest years, until 1952 when her parents built and ran the Featherville Store on the banks of the South Fork of the Boise River. It was then Donna and her family split their time between the two locations, attending school in a one-room school house at Pine.
In 1962, Donna graduated from Boise High School, then immediately entered beauty college and served a one-year apprenticeship at the Bon Marche in Boise. Her enjoyment of styling hair allowed her to open her first shop on 27th and State Street when she was 20 years old. It was soon after that she built and ran her second shop at the same time in Featherville, making sure the people living in the mountains looked their finest.
In 1965, she decided to sublease her shops and attend Idaho State University for one year. She could be seen cruising the highways in her 1964 Pontiac GTO convertible and soaking in the pools of Lava Hot Springs more often than attending class.
After her college experience was complete Donna returned to her Boise shops and barber school where she attained her "Master Barber" status, apprenticing at John Moline's Hair Styling and Barber, and barbering in the Boise State Student Union Building.
In 1970, after childhood games of ring-around-the-rosy and his frequent visits to the Featherville Store, Donna's heart was won over by her most loyal companion and she married Rod Brower, her husband of over 41 years.
With the beauty of her brown eyes and the sweetest of a gentle heart, she was a treasure.
Together, in 1972, they built Miss Donna's Beauty Salon at 19th and State Street, where Donna operated her shop up until a few weeks of her home going. For almost 40 years her vocation as a beautician was a mere disguise, for her true purpose was to bring joy, blessing, compassion and love through Jesus to everyone who entered through the doors of her little shop. She had no customers, just lots of friends whose hair she happened to do. Never was there a person whom she came into contact with that she wasn't able to encourage through conversation, prayer, some kind of gift, or lunch.
In 1973, Donna gave birth to her first child, Ryan, then twins, Kevin and Kirk, in 1976. Her boys (all four) were the apple of her eye and she pleasured in all kinds of outings with them, whether fall hunting camps, week-long fishing trips or sports events. Her family wondered what it would have been like had she been blessed with daughters, as she endured many of the wild escapades her family led her on.
Later in her life, Donna found great joy and pleasure in running the trailer court in Featherville with Rod, making numerous friends, often praying and loving those there as they would walk down "Meditation Lane."
Perhaps the thing that gave her most joy and brought the biggest of smiles was the birth of her five grandchildren: Ellie, Jesiah, Ziah, Breckyn, Will, and step-granddaughter Payton. Grandma could often be seen washing the grandkids' feet in the sink, painting nails or doing hair, and getting on her hands and knees to growl and wrestle with the boys.
While she will be greatly missed by the countless lives she touched, she will be remembered for her life lived so well, investing in those things, not of this world, but for that which lasts, for her precious Savior, King, and Friend.
She is survived by her husband, Rod, sons Ryan and his wife, Monica, Kirk and his wife, Jill, Kevin and six grandchildren.
Donna was preceded in death by her father, mother, her sister Marlene McCoy and baby sister Colleen.
The family request memorials be sent to Campus Crusade for Christ Ministries, 276 Sunset Dr., Moscow, ID 83843.