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Class of 46
Florence Beebe Anderson
Wow! How do you condence 60 years of living down to one or two paragraphs? I'll try.
I Graduated U. of I. with BS in Home Economics. A year later married Allan Anderson from Chicago, also a U.of I. grad in Electrical Engineering. Very soon the US was engulfed in the Korean conflict and Allan was drafted into the Army. He was assigned to the Plant Engineering Dept. of Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and remained there for his entire service time. I was a civilian employee of the army. After his discharge we moved back to Brookfield, Ill. where he worked for General Motors.
About two years later he was offered a job with Martin-Marietta in Denver and we jumped at the chance to live in Colorado where he helped with the design of the Skylab. We lived there for about 13 years and during that time we adopted 2 tiny babies--a girl and a boy. Eventually we learned that we would have to move to the New Orleans area where he would be working on the Space Shuttle booster design. We hated to leave Colorado but you have to bloom where you're planted. We found the people down here to be very warm and welcoming and a lot of "Missile Gypsies" were coming down at the same time so we had lots of company. It's not so pleasant here in the summertime but the winters are wonderful. In 32 years here we've definitely put down roots. Our children grew up, graduated, married and provided us with 6 lovely grandchildren. We're very active in the United Methodist here. In fact, when he retired from Martin, Allan went to the Baptist Seminary in New Orleans and got his Master of Divinity degree and is now a Hospital Chaplain and the Minister of Visitation at our church.
Not long after we came here I took some cake decorating lessons just for fun and now I have my own business: Cake Superior, Inc. I stay as busy as I want to be, making wedding cakes, etc.
We were very fortunate to come through Hurricane Katrina with only a tiny bit of damage. Some shingles blew off the roof and we lost the contents of our refrigerator and freezer. We evacuated to our daughter's house in Texas and stayed there for three weeks until the electricity and water were restored in Slidell. We are very grateful that we are both still in good health and can enjoy the company of friends and family. I would truly enjoy coming to the class reunion but we have other obligations that will prevent that. I'll be thinking of you all and would enjoy hearing about how the reunion went.
Best wishes to all, Florence Anderson
This Page Created 2 June 2006
Revised 4 July 2006