Beckman Family Reunion

Where would George be if it were not for nostalgia? I suppose he wouldn’t sing songs like “Forever Young” when saying good-bye to sixth graders he had just spent 180 days with. He wouldn’t learn WWII songs on the piano and play them late at night. He wouldn’t write nonsense to friends, old and new.

We hear of weather cycles. We hear of the 17 year cicadas. There are years of nostalgia.

This year is my 50th high school reunion. This has put me in contact with friends I knew for a short time. One friend, Bill, has become somewhat a historian of the little town of La Verne, California. Bill sent me the obituary and a Lions Club article about my Grandfather Beckman’s sudden death in 1933. He was a grocer and died putting up eggs. It was odd to read about the death of George (J) Beckman.

George J. was a private man who ran away from home at an early age and never talked about family. He had two sons, so on the Beckman side, we have been few in number. I had my Uncle Harold and he had one son, Harold Warren… Hal. My father had one son and named me after his father. So, for a while, there were four of us, with Beckman blood running in our veins.

Hal married an English woman while in the US Air Force and had one daughter, Celeste. I had two children, Rachel and Matthew. With Rachel’s two kids, we have had as many as five “Beckmans” sitting around a table. I bragged about this once before. In 2008 Hal passed away after a valiant struggle with a brain tumor.

Celeste, her Husband John Clarke and their two children came over from England a few weeks ago. We met for dinner and there were six at the table that were of Beckman decent. If Lizzy and Jack had been there, we could have pushed the number to eight. The next day Ruth and I met the Clarkes at the Santa Ana Cemetery. We stood around the Caudle/Smith/Beckman plot spanning seven generations.

Probably not the biggest of news, but for an only child it was a big event.