My life has been rich and rewarding, and it makes me smile to think about it as I reminisce. I was born in a small sleepy southern Illinois town, Galatia, with a population of 800. I still love that little town! Pearl Harbor occurred in December 1941, and I was born after that world-changing event in January 1942. You now know I will soon turn 70!
My parents both had been married before finding each other, and there were seven half brothers and sisters when I arrived with the youngest being 12 years old. Two were already married, but the other five managed to spoil me until they joined the older two and served in the fight of freedom for our country.
When I was 4 years old, a baby sister came along and I did not like her at all – although I learned to love her. Both of us made our mother, who was older, nervous, so I spent my youth outdoors with my dad, and my sister, Sharlene, spent hers indoors with my mother. I drove a tractor every summer, as well as picked hundreds of boxes of strawberries. Some of my other duties included pulling stumps to clear more land and hoeing row upon row of corn.
We had several large gardens, chickens, turkeys, pigs, one cow, and I had a horse and a dog. My mother was a fabulous cook and made mouth-watering pies every day, so around 3:30 p.m., I still get hungry – but pie is not on the agenda. Mother passed away 18 years ago. I also cherish the many quilts she made and enjoy thinking of the beautiful dresses she sewed for me and my sister with some of the fabric in these quilts, one of which was my first long, fancy dress for a piano recital when I was 5 years old.
Two of the most exciting days for me were hog-killing and making apple butter outdoors in a large copper kettle.
I always got to stay home from school in the fall on those two days. We had a large smokehouse and we also canned fruits, vegetables and meat all summer. Until I started to college, we were self-sufficient; everything we ate, for the most part, we grew or raised. However, my sister and I could each have one Hershey bar a day, that is an item on my “bucket” list. My family lived at the edge of town on 12 acres, and until I was 10 years old, we did not have an indoor bathroom. I loved going to school to use the indoor plumbing!
My dad was my hero! He was born in the 1890s and was a fun-loving person who was kind to everyone. He played the harmonica and organ and taught all of us so many songs I have not heard in years, such as the folk song, “Old Dunderbec.” He taught me how to ride a bicycle when I was three, how to shoe a horse in his blacksmith shop and how to shoot a gun. My dad was given a choice of college or a new horse and buggy, and as one would surmise of a 17-year-old, he chose the horse and buggy and worked in the coal mine for 40 years as well as farmed 200 acres. He was one of the happiest people I have known in my life. When I was 15, he died suddenly. It was a terrible shock for our family. Without a scholarship, an 80-cent-an-hour student work job and a job on Saturdays, I could not have attended college.
I have loved to sing for as long as I can remember and did such things as stand on a large tree stump in our yard, my first stage, and sing for the neighbors as well as sit on the bar in my maternal grandfather’s taverns and sing, much to my mother’s chagrin. Throughout the years, I sang at church for funerals and weddings and sang at various school productions. I still sing but not as well as I used to sing and not as often. Instead of majoring in music in college, I had met this handsome, 17-year-old boy in a shoe store and did not want to spend five years on a fine arts degree. Instead, I majored in English and both of us went to Southern Illinois University Carbondale and were Salukis until we moved to Shockerland.
This wonderful man, Don Beggs, and I were married in 1963. The next year we moved to Iowa City, Iowa, where I worked for the 5-year-old company that most everyone at a university knows, ACT. It was an incredible experience, and while Don was studying for his doctorate in statistics and measurement, I was meeting all of the big names in testing from throughout the world. When Don finished his degree in 1966, we moved back to Carbondale, where we lived for 32 years. While there, our children, Brent and Pam, were born, I finished my master’s degree, owned a children’s clothing store with my friend, Judie Mouw, learned to swim at 36 and taught sixth grade. Don worked through the professorial ranks, becoming full professor at the age of 30 and retired in 1998 from SIUC as chancellor.
We moved to Wichita on Dec. 27, 1998, and the first thing we did the next evening was attend the Cessna Classic at the Roundhouse. Living and loving Wichita are synonyms for me! What an awesome city and university, all because of the warm, hard-working, caring people. Life is about our journeys and the people and animals we encounter. Mine has been blessed from the beginning, and my Russian Blue cat, CJ, adds to my joy every day!
Don and I work as a team as he leads this great university as its 12th president. There are times when I am attending a student concert or an event at the museum or the concert hall when I know I have to be one of the luckiest women in this city. If we had written our own job description, it could not have been as good as our experiences with this job have been. Our children and their families, which now include our daughter-in-law, Jeri, four grands, Jacob Jarvis, Brendan Beggs, Heather Jarvis and Sydney Beggs, all love to visit us in Wichita anytime they possibly can.
I have walked several paths and enjoyed them all. I have always felt fortunate that I know what is really important in life. I never aspired to be the spouse of a university president, but I am so thankful to be Don Beggs’ wife and to live and work on the campus of Wichita State University. Then and now have been about relationships and love with people, animals, music and nature – all the things in life that are free!
Go Shocks!
