Where do you live now?
214 N.E. 11th Ave.
Faribault, MN 55021

That’s Faribault, as in Faribo Woolen Mills (threatening bankruptcy)
and Farmer Seed and Nursery. Faribault is the home of the Tilt-A-
Whirl.

E-mail: beckmann.sarah@mayo.edu

Christmas cards, notes, etc. always welcome. I keep trying to get
faithful about Christmas cards, but only manage them once or twice a
decade.

Name of spouse/partner: Dave Beckmann. He says “I would not go to my
own reunion (Eden Prairie’s also this year) but don’t mind going to
other people’s”.

Children and Pets (number, type, names, ages):
Five children: Sarah, almost 18; John, almost 16; Katherine, 13;
Julia, 7 and Emily, 4. You know that irritating woman in the grocery
store who lets her kids start to eat food before it’s purchased? Well,
that’s me!

One dog. The youngest has been promised a hamster if she’ll sleep in
her own bed for a week.

Something memorable/highlights about your days or years at Marshall-U
High:
You will no doubt think I spent too much time in class. So be it.
Lots of things and people for which I am grateful. To name a few:
going to school in Dinkytown with all the cool things there . . . Mr.
Walther’s corny math jokes, a great math teacher who was kind and got
his kids to work . . . Mr. Mikelson for the same reason; even though he
seemed strict he had a big soft spot in his heart--balancing equations
calmed me and chemistry labs make me nostalgic . . . so do Home Ec
kitchens, we made dozens of cookies and took them home for Christmas in
a 3-lb. coffee can along with a recipe box, which I still have . . .
Mr. McDonough, who didn’t expect me to do anything more than read; I
felt I was getting away with murder so I read a lot . . . Ms. Devin
(soc. studies) who wrote in my yearbook that she hoped to have a
daughter like me someday . . . Mr. L’Herault, who paid me a compliment
about the weird one-act play, Interview, in eleventh grade--a play just
avant garde enough to be totally embarassing to a teenager like me, so
the compliment helped with the humiliation . . . Mr. Johnson for
teaching Russian, the most beautiful language in the world . . . we
could have taken French, German, Spanish, or Russian--we didn’t know
how lucky we were . . . political science with Mr. Rockler--
”correlation is not causation” . . . making volcanoes and astrolabs in
Science class . . . the Erskine, Meyer and Jeddeloh temperature
scales . . . seventh grade English with Merle Peterson . . . she read
us “Witness for the Prosecution”, had us write synopses, then proceeded
to edit them mercilessly; her’s was about a sentence long . . . man, I
thought, if this is what high school is like I’m in trouble . . . I got
to work at the switchboard in the main office, with those tangled cords
and plugs, what a trip.

I loved getting to school early and just sitting in the halls,
wondering who would come by.

Remember all those meetings about the student center--would we,
wouldn’t we allow smoking? --well I was afraid to speak up at the time
but I thought that was a ridiculous argument! What school would or
should have allowed smoking in the student lounge? When all was said
and done no one really spent any time there.

I envied the kids who grew up in Prospect Park, went to church
retreats together,etc. -- I felt isolated living in Highland Park, St.
Paul. Still one could walk home partway via Prospect Park, that was
fun . . .I had to take two city busses to get home; no wonder I rode my
bike whenever possible. With twenty pounds of books in my backpack.
In a dress. When school wasn’t in session I was lonely, spent hours
biking up and down River Road, hoping to run into someone (read: boys);
on the rare occasion when I did I was speechless.

What have you been doing since then?
I was a Russian major in college and was all set to go to graduate
school in Russian, but I wasn’t sure what I’d do with that degree when
I finished, so my plans changed. I finally finished school in 1984,
the apocalyptic year we thought would never come. I met my husband,
Dave, in medical school in Rochester, MN and we were married in 1983.
We are country doctors on the Minnesota prairie. . . . well,
anyway, I am a pediatrician and he is an internist (a doctor for grown-
ups). Actually he is the best internist in the state of Minnesota.
No lie. In dinky little Faribault. We live and work in Faribault at
Cannon Valley Clinic; check out our clinic’s website at
www.mayohealthsystem.org. I am in the upper right hand corner of the
home page, with two mesmerized children.

I am still not sure what I want to be when my children grow up.

Other interesting things about yourself that you’d like us to know:
I have a great collection of church cookbooks, hospital auxiliary
cookbooks, the like. In spite of this I am unable to make a meal
everybody will eat, so I am always looking for more. It’s amazing,
the advice for life you can find in a church cookbook. Household
hints: “Store cottage cheese carton upside-down. It will keep twice as
long”; bible passages for all situations: when ”you seem too busy--
Eccl. 3:1-15” or in case that worked too well and you “are becoming lax
and indifferent--Matt.25 or Rev.3”; platitudes: “You cannot prevent the
birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them
from building nests in your hair”. My favorite recipe section is the
Salads, where you have repeating themes--there’s your lime jello-
cottage cheese-pineapple salad, your broccoli-bacon-red onion-raisin
salad, your coleslaw-ramen noodles-toasted almond salad, and of course
the disgusting coolwhip-apple-Snickers salad which I never make--how
that ever got into the salad section I’ll never know.

Thanks to the people who stuck their necks out to organize and work on
this reunion. Because it matters.