Donna Boutelle

Boutelle was born in Sioux City, Iowa, the daughter of Jeanette Allison Milton, a photographer.^[1] She attended Sequoia High School in Redwood City, California, Santa Rosa Junior College,^[2][3] and the University of California, Berkeley.^[4] She earned an associate degree at Santa Rosa in 1953,^[5] completed WAC training at Fort McClellan in 1955,^[6] earned a bachelor's degree at Berkeley in 1960,^[7] a master's degree in history in 1962,^[8] and a PhD in history in 1970, with a dissertation titled "Louis the Pious and Ermoldus Nigellus: An Inquiry Into the Historical Reliability of In Honorem Hludowici".^[9]

In the 1950s and 1960s, Boutelle was a psychiatric technician at the Sonoma State Hospital.^[10] For over forty years, Boutelle was a history professor on the faculty at California State University, Long Beach. She achieved full professor status in 1978.^[11] She specialized in the early Middle Ages, and was associate vice-president for academic affairs at CSULB.^[12] She taught in New Zealand on an exchange program. She retired in 2004.^[13]

Boutelle was president of the West Coast Association of Women Historians from 1972 to 1973, and co-chair of the Coordinating Committee on Women in the Historical Profession.^[14][15][16] She regularly reviewed books for journals including RQ^[17][18] and The History Teacher.^[19][20][21] She was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.^[22]

Boutelle married a Marine corporal, William Cavenaugh Rose, in 1950;^[2] they divorced in 1952.^[23] She died in 2008, aged 76 years, in Santa Rosa, California.^[4]