Dona Sue (Meek) Faulkner

Dona Sue Faulkner passed from this earth on October 7th, 2022, after a short but intense illness.

She was born Dona Sue Meek on January 12th, 1937, in Oklahoma City, OK to Elwyn and Lorene Meek. She spent her childhood moving frequently between Oklahoma and Missouri due to her mother’s illness. In 1960 she married Dick P. Hoke and had two children, Melba Diane Hoke, and Dean Phillip Hoke. In 1964 the family moved to Washington, D.C. to work at Gallaudet University. For the next 12 years she served in several positions at the University and the Model Secondary School for the Deaf, including as the Executive Secretary for the President of the University. During the riots after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death she became the liaison between the National Guard, who were using the campus as a staging area, and the campus’ faculty and students. She was selected to serve as the official interpreter for the deaf members of a blue-ribbon committee appointed by the President of the United States, the National Committee for the Education of the Deaf. In that role she traveled and interpreted for Senators and actors alike. Through those connections she was recommended to the team that wrote the bill that became the American Disability Act in 1970.

She divorced Dick in 1975 and remarried Dr. Robert C. Mehan in 1979. After relocating to Texas, at the age of fifty, Dona completed her master’s degree at Angelo State University graduating with honors. She taught hearing-impaired students’ history and government at the Southwest Collegiate Institute for the Deaf for six years. Following the death of her husband, Dr. Mehan, in 1992, she became the Executive Dean of the Howard Junior College campus in San Angelo, Texas. In addition to her on campus responsibilities, she also served on several local boards and committees.

In 1998 Dona married Ben T. Faulkner and retired from Howard Junior College. She moved to the Fort Worth, Texas area to be with her husband and devote herself to their combined family that included seven adult children and multiple grandchildren. She returned to Howard Junior College in 2005 to serve as the Dean of Workforce Development, finally retiring permanently in 2008. She and Ben lived happily in Sadler, Texas until Ben’s illness in 2019 necessitated moving to Weatherford with her daughter, Diane, and her family.