Cafaro $100,000 gift, YSU name change honors Betty Nohra

LIBERTY — Joseph S. Nohra was overwhelmed when he learned that Anthony and Phyllis Cafaro had donated $100,000 to Youngstown State University in memory of his late wife, Betty C. Nohra.

Just to know that someone was sharing in his loss meant a lot to him, he said.

Nohra was overwhelmed again when he learned that YSU would name a new resource center in the university’s nursing program the Betty C. Nohra Student Resource Center. The university’s board of trustees approved the name in June.

The Cafaros and the university were showing respect for him and his family and his many years with the Cafaro Corp. and the university, he said.

Nohra, who retired as chief financial officer of the Cafaro Corp. at the end of 2000 with more than 44 years of service, was also a YSU trustee for nine years, leaving that position in 2004.

His wife, who died in August 2006, was unaware that the Cafaros intended to make a gift to YSU in her name, he said.

Betty Nohra had her own connection with the Cafaro family.

She graduated from the Youngstown Hospital School of Nursing in 1957 as a registered nurse and then went to work at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City for two years.

She returned to Youngstown in 1959 as a private-duty nurse.

She was a special person to the Cafaro family, Nohra said, noting that she served as a private-duty nurse to Flora Cafaro and remained close to Flora’s son, Bill, and his wife, Alyce, until their deaths in the late 1990s.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com