Carol Beth Popelka

Carol Beth (née Coupal) Popelka died peacefully in her sleep, at her home, surrounded by loving family, on Monday, February 2nd, 2026, after a five-year battle with Frontotemporal dementia.

Carol was born May 1st, 1952, to Ruth Evelyn (Duston) Coupal and Joseph Richard Coupal Jr in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Her early years were spent there and in Maine with her parents and her three siblings: sisters Deborah and Jennifer, and brother Jonathan.

During her time in New England, Carol developed a deep love and appreciation of the outdoors, following in her parents’ footsteps as a passionate conservationist; this early commitment to wildlife and the environment ultimately lasted her entire life.

After grade school, she moved to the Midwest and attended Ames High School in Iowa before earning her bachelor’s degree from Luther College.

Her professional career spanned non-profit work, education administration, and grant writing, but the consistent theme was always her pursuit to make education accessible to those in need. She spent her early years teaching English at Logan High School before being hired to implement the EEO at Trane. Following her Equal Employment Opportunity work, she joined WWTC’s development office and carried those development skills to her next roles at the La Crosse Foundation and Viterbo, becoming a member of the NSFRE during that time. The capstone of her career was her final role at the Cooperative Educational Service Agency. She worked at CESA for nearly 15 years, developing and running their distance learning program and bringing hard-to-access educational resources to remote and rural areas across Wisconsin.

Outside her professional life, she was an avid sportswoman, excelling at tennis, golf, canoeing, and kayaking. It was while volunteering to teach tennis at Logan High School that she met her husband, Roger Wayne Popelka.

Carol and Roger were married in 1982; they welcomed their first son, Jonathan Joseph Popelka, in 1983, and their second son, Daniel Roger Popelka, in 1985. Carol, like her mother, spent her life creating a warm and nurturing home for her family and supporting them in their endeavors. She was also devoted to her extended family, traveling to see them often. She was a much-beloved aunt and was considered a grandmother by her two grandnieces. Though her professional and community work absorbed much of her time, nothing was more important to Carol than family. One of her greatest annual highlights was attending Coupal and Popelka family reunions. These events were always filled with loving laughter, fabulous food, competitive cribbage, and the warm embrace of her extended families, and she instilled this deep value of familial devotion in her sons.

Beyond her commitments to her family, Carol also took her civic duties seriously, passionately advocating for equality, diversity, justice and freedom of speech. She served as an election inspector during multiple election cycles and sat on an educational advisory board of Wisconsin Public Television. She was a staunch advocate for public education and served on the board of the Riverside International Friendship Gardens, including as the organization’s Secretary. Amidst all this, she was deeply involved with the reintroduction of the Whooping Crane population at the Necedah Wildlife Refuge through Operation Migration and participated in their environmental education program. In her retirement, Carol dedicated her time to the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge and sat on the board of Friends of the Refuge Mississippi River Pools 7 & 8. She had seemingly boundless energy for contributing to her community of La Crosse, Wisconsin. And at home, she helped to foster the beautiful Eastbrook Gardens, tended by her husband, with enthusiasm and support.

For over four decades, Carol was an avid member of her church choir at the First Congregational United Church of Christ, and in more recent years, she became a beloved member of the Giving Hearts Choir for memory loss patients and their caregivers. But Carol’s love of music spanned her entire life. She played piano and sang from an early age. During her college years, she performed with the Nordic Choir, the flagship ensemble at Luther College, and passed on this love of music to her sons, both of whom play guitar and sing with great skill and passion. She loved hearing them perform.

Carol loved not only music, but poetry, art, cribbage, sport, foreign languages, and travel. Most of all, however, she loved her friends and family. Carol was both a deeply loyal friend and a devoted caretaker in the Popelka and Coupal families, always looking out for her loved ones, always carefully cataloguing shared memories, and generating new ones with her warm heart and never-ending patience. She was quick to laugh, comforting to be around, and selfless above all else. She will be terribly missed by all who knew her. We will miss her heart, her voice, and her laugh.

Carol is survived by her husband Roger, sons Jonathan and Daniel, siblings Deborah (husband Ken), Jennifer (husband Evan), and Jonathan (wife Cathy); as well as nephew Adam, nieces Elena, Juliana (husband Kyle), and Elizabeth (husband Arden); and two granddaughters (technically grandnieces), Genevieve and Delphine.

A celebration of Carol’s life will take place at the First Congregational United Church of Christ on Tuesday, the 31st of March at 3 pm. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to Friends of the Refuge, Mississippi River Pools 7 & 8, the Riverside International Friendship Gardens, or PBS Wisconsin.