Rose Catherine Bealer

Rose Catherine “Cathy” (Freehill) Bealer, 84, of Fontana, California, passed away on April 21, 2026 in the home she shared with her dearly departed husband Don (known to many as simply Bealer) for two decades.

Cathy was born November 21, 1941 in Livingston County, Illinois to Cletus P. Freehill and Margaret C. (Snider) Freehill. She was the youngest of twelve.

When Cathy was 8 years old, the devout Irish-Catholic family moved to Fontana, California to continue their agricultural enterprise with a chicken farm. She graduated from Fontana High in 1959. She spent the remainder of her life in and around Fontana where she loved to have fun dancing and spending time with friends, and where she had her only son Ronald Eugene Snyder in 1964.

She worked for over 20 years at National Can, and around the same amount of time running the show at the local school cafeteria. She married Donald Ray Bealer in 1972. She and Don spent nearly every waking moment together from then on, frequently going camping and on adventures abroad. Cruises were their favorite, but they took many road trips as well, especially in their RV. She greatly admired his competent handiwork and neighborliness. In this fashion, they enjoyed the Ramrod Senior Housing community thoroughly. She pushed on with those memories after his passing in 2020. The two were stalwart personalities individually, magnified intensely as a unit.

Her son Ron and his wife Lori moved to Oklahoma in 1996 shortly after their first son, and Cathy and Don’s first grandson Loren Micah Snyder was born in 1994. They were blessed by two others–Jarah Ray Snyder in 1996 and Cambria Rose (Snyder) Troiano in 1999.

Cathy loved things that made her happy like Betty Boop, Polka Music, her dog Tippy, Saturday Coffee with a splash of Bailey’s (her and Don’s tradition), and her three beloved grandchildren that they would frequently visit in Oklahoma.

Remaining to cherish Cathy’s memory are her son, Ron; grandchildren, Micah, Jarah, and Cambria and their significant others, Antonella, Sara, and Matthew respectively; Brother Lawrence “Larry” Freehill, sister Lois Cook, and many close friends and neighbors.

Preceding Cathy in death are her husband Don Bealer; daughter-in-law Lori Snyder; brothers James, Joseph, Jerome, Peter, and Donald, and sisters Mary, Patricia, and Therese.

Service held Saturday, May 15, 2026 at her home in Rialto, CA.