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Obituary: Janice V. "Lady Elvis" Kucera

Janice V. Kucera was born to Charles A. and Viola R. Rank on December 15, 1940 on the family farm southeast of Exeter, Nebraska and passed away December 19, 2025 at the Holmes Lake Nursing Facility in Lincoln, Nebraska at the age of 85. She was the eldest of two daughters.

Throughout her life, Janice was passionate about many things including her love of animals, trees, and all things in nature as well as Elvis. It was that love of Elvis that inspired her persuit to perform as The Lady Elvis. As a young girl, she and her sister sang together as a duo "Jan and Fran" and enjoyed entertaining around local communities. When in high school, Janice was encouraged to perform as Elvis in a school production and loved the energy of that performance. It was then that she began her career of entertaining as The Lady Elvis.

Her singing career spanned more than 40 years in which she covered many songs in the likeness of Elvis both locally and in other areas of the country, as well as songs from her own record Janice K and the Phantom Band: Hard Rock in the Heartland. While chasing her dream, it led to her having a variety of careers including a secretary at Exeter Public Schools, waitressing positions, cashier and keno runner in Las Angeles. Her career also included small parts in several movies while living in Los Angeles, appearing in the book "I am Elvis" as well as appearances on the Oprah Winfrey and Joan Rivers shows. In 1999 she was inducted into the Nebraska Music Hall of Fame, an honor for which she was ever grateful. She decided to step away from performing following the loss of her parents and a series of health issues. She credited her love of performing and ability to channel a likeness of Elvis to her interactions with him in both Las Vegas and Memphis as well as the opportunity to attend 39 live performances and the befriending of his Uncle Vester while living in Memphis with her parents. 

Janice's other love was wildlife and nature. She was a fierce proponent of conservation and chose to support and donate to organizations like Defenders of Wildlife and Saving the Redwoods. She spent many hours out on the family farm enjoying the peace and quiet as well as local sites where she would take a thermos of coffee and sit quietly waiting for a deer, a raccoon, or a bobcat to walk by. Many of those trips involved her daddie Charlie and they would sit for hours enjoying the solace. 

Janice was preceded in death by her father Charles Kucera, her mother Viola Rank Kucera, and her sister Fran Kucera Hendrych.

She is survived by her niece Wendy Heath and husband Clayton Heath, great niece Charli Heath and great nephews Jami Nguyen and husband Peter Nguyen, as well as many cousins in California.

What's New on the Library Shelves? | Fiction, Contemporary, Short Story Edition

The Irish Goodbye by Heather Aimee O'Neill

In this emotionally resonant and gripping novel, three adult sisters struggle with the past as they reunite for a Thanksgiving weekend on the East End of Long Island.

It’s been years since the three Ryan sisters were all together at their beloved family home. Two decades ago, their lives were upended by a fatal accident on their brother Topher’s boat. Now the Ryan women are back for Thanksgiving, eager to reconnect, but each carries a heavy secret. The eldest, Cait, still holding guilt for the role no one knows she played in the boat accident, rekindles a flame with her high school crush. Middle sister Alice has been thrown a curveball that threatens the career she’s restarting and faces a difficult decision that may doom her marriage. And the youngest, Maggie, is finally taking the risk of bringing the woman she loves home to meet her devoutly Catholic mother.

When Cait invites a guest from their shared past to Thanksgiving dinner, old tensions boil over and new truths surface, nearly overpowering the flickering light of their family bond. Far more than a family holiday will be ruined unless the sisters can find a way to forgive one another—and themselves.

A River Runs Through It and Other Short Stories by Norman Maclean

When Norman Maclean sent the manuscript of A River Runs through It and Other Stories to New York publishers, he received a slew of rejections. One editor, so the story goes, replied, “it has trees in it.” Forty years later, the title novella is recognized as one of the great American tales of the twentieth century, and Maclean as one of the most beloved writers of our time. The finely distilled product of a long life of often surprising rapture—for fly-fishing, for the woods, for the interlocked beauty of life and art—A River Runs through It has established itself as a classic of the American West. This new edition will introduce a fresh audience to Maclean’s beautiful prose and understated emotional insights.

Elegantly redesigned, A River Runs through It includes a new foreword by Robert Redford, director of the Academy Award-winning 1992 film adaptation of River. Based on Maclean’s own experiences as a young man, the book’s two novellas and short story are set in the small towns and mountains of western Montana. It is a world populated with drunks, loggers, card sharks, and whores, but also one rich in the pleasures of fly-fishing, logging, cribbage, and family. By turns raunchy and elegiac, these superb tales express, in Maclean’s own words, “a little of the love I have for the earth as it goes by.”

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

"Imagine, the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle. . . . Isn’t there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one’s life is preserved in some way, that this very letter may one day mean something, even if it is a very small thing, to someone?”

Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It is about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime.

Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.

Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has—a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.

Sybil Van Antwerp’s life of letters might be “a very small thing,” but she also might be one of the most memorable characters you will ever read.

The Satisfaction Cafe by Kathy Wang 

How do we live so that we are satisfied? How can people connect during moments of loneliness? This is the story of Joan Liang, a woman who moves across the world to America, and in trying to answer these questions builds a wildly original life.

Joan’s life is a series of unexpected events: she never thought she would live in California, nor did she expect her first marriage to implode—especially as quickly and spectacularly as it did. She definitely did not expect to fall in love with an older, wealthy American man and become his fourth wife and mother to his youngest children.

Joan and her children grow older, and one day she makes a drastic change: she opens the Satisfaction Café, a place where customers can find connection through conversation. With humor and grace, Joan creates a space for meaningful relationships and constructs a lasting legacy.

Vivid, comic, and profoundly moving, The Satisfaction Café is a novel about found family, the joy and loneliness that come with age, andhow we can seek satisfaction at any stage of life. This is a novel of tremendous pleasures:sentences that teem with rich observations, wonderful plotting, and, in Joan, a protagonist for the ages.

Death Notice: Ronald J. "Ron" Ruhl

 A Mass of Christian Burial for Ron will be Friday, January 2, 2026 at 10:30am at St. Stephens Catholic Church in Exeter, Nebraska. A Rosary will be prayed at 10:00am at the Church, prior to the Mass.

A Graveside service will be held in the Exeter Public Cemetery.

Public Visitation will be from 9:00am-10:00am on Friday, January 2, 2026 at St. Stephens Catholic Church. 

Memorials are suggested to the Fillmore County Cancer Conquerors.