Stories From the Tree

Ancestor story • Dora Jane Panting Beus

A Quiet Strength

November 17, 1885 – April 27, 1959  •  Surnames: Panting · Beus

About eight months pregnant, Dora carried her oldest boy, Vern, in her arms and hurried toward town for help. According to her daughter Rita, Vern had swallowed poison from the kitchen. He died before Dora reached the doctor. He was only two years old.¹

Dora Jane Panting was born on November 17, 1885, to Christopher Panting and Selina Eliza Reed. She grew up in the Soda Springs area of Idaho and married Albert Beus in December 1907. Together they would have twelve children and make their home in the ranching country east of town.²

Just weeks after Vern’s death, their second son, Albert Lloyd, was born. Pearl followed in 1911. Then, in November 1912, Dora gave birth to twins at the ranch. A newspaper reported that the babies lived only a few minutes. They were never named, and the family remembered that they were buried there.^{2, 3}

Eva and Raymond Joel—known as R. J.—joined the family in the years that followed. But in 1917, Albert Lloyd died of measles. He was only six years old, nearly seven.^{1, 2}

Dora’s family continued to grow. Rita was born in 1918, Lynn in 1920, and Ted in 1923. In 1927, another baby boy, remembered by the family as Lorraine, died soon after his premature birth.^{2, 4}

The youngest child, Leroy, arrived in the spring of 1929. That November, a car crash near Magna, Utah, badly injured Dora and killed her eight-month-old son. Rita remembered that her mother was still in the hospital when Leroy was buried and could not be there.^{1, 5}

Then, a year after Leroy’s death, fourteen-year-old R. J. died of meningitis.⁶

Losing so many sons sounds unthinkable and heart wrenching. I cannot know what it took for Dora to carry on. Rita remembered one way her mother honored the children she missed: around Memorial Day, the family gathered wildflowers in the hills, and Dora arranged them for her sons’ graves.¹

Dora continued to raise her surviving children and do the work of ranch life. Rita remembered her mother as “quiet and timid,” someone who loved to sing and was a “wonderful cook.” Eva remembered the Beus ranch as a stopping place for cattlemen moving their herds through the area each spring and fall. Dora did not know how many people might arrive needing a meal. “Mother was always cooking for a bunch,” Eva recalled.^{1, 7}

Over the years, Dora fed hundreds of men passing through the ranch. Her table welcomed people beyond her own family.

I am Dora’s great-great-granddaughter. When I think of her strength, I picture her gathering wildflowers for the sons she missed, caring for the children still at home, and preparing food for whoever came to the ranch. She could not keep every person she loved beside her, but she kept making room for others at her table. And that is part of her story that's worth remembering.