Carolyn Hardy Marks 40th Anniversary on Alumni Board; Doug Gabbert Talks Beekeeping, Service to Country, and Life Lessons

Carolyn Hardy marked her 40th anniversary as a member of the Worth County Alumni Board Sunday. She has emceed the event for many years. There are four board members, Mary Kay Hunt, Carolyn Hardy, Rosa Williams, and Edith Miller. The board is looking for new members. Contact any board member if interested.

The school is looking to give away dozens of old trophies from the 1960’s to the present. The school tore down the storage shed at the southwest corner of the school and the trophies are located in the science room of the school for the present. Contact the school during regular business hours.

Ms. Hardy told a story in relation to the giveaway. Her husband, David, started up a computer program at the school in the 1980’s. In its first year, the school competed at a computer Olympiad against much bigger schools and won the whole thing. She found the trophy from that event among the many trophies the school had.

The association has been trying to keep track of graduates who passed away. Three that were noted were Troy Saville, Susan Hall, and Pat Swift.

Instead of the usual black and gold décor for the meal, the event was decked in patriotic colors for the country’s 250th anniversary.

This year, the association gave scholarships to Brayden Murphy and Sawyer Thurman. Last year’s honorees were Makenzie Walter and Eliza Corey. The association voted to raise the scholarship from $250 to $300.

There was $2,508.12 in the account at the start of last year. There was $306 raised from collections last year, $243 in alumni directory sales, and $750 given out in scholarships, leaving a balance of $2,237.02. There was $10,357.60 in the CD, with $220 being earned in interest.

The Family Circle Singers began one day in 1989 when the Hardy children, while riding in the back of their family’ s van, suddenly started singing, “Going to the Chapel of Love” while coming home from a family reunion. They tried their hand at it and won the talent show at Old Defiance Days that year and then the Worth County Fair. They sang at nursing homes in Worth County, Albany, Mount Ayr, King City, at weddings, and Veterans Day gatherings. They are now semi-retired. They have performed everything from Glenn Miller songs in the 1930’s and 1940’s to 1980’s. They sang “Fernando” from ABBA, a popular group in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and Lee Greenwood’s patriotic song, “Proud to be an American” in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary.

Doug Gabbert of the Class of 1976 spoke at the gathering. He wanted to go to Saudi Arabia and work in the oil fields there, but didn’t know how to make the connections. A friend introduced him to beekeeping, and he took after it and was a migratory beekeeper, moving periodically from Missouri to Florida until 1986, when he enlisted in the Army.

At one point, Mr. Gabbert went to North Dakota to the Badlands, near the border with Montana, where he heard it was really good for bees. His first year brought about a bumper crop, but it took four years for his next one. The weather was just as unpredictable as Missouri, as rainstorms would miss him and hit somewhere 50 miles away.

He noted that Theodore Roosevelt lived for a time in the Badlands and that he credited it with the skills that led him to becoming President. “I’ve embraced the strenuous life,” said Mr. Gabbert, although it almost backfired on him once. He and a friend were moving to Florida, when the alternator quit on their Ford F-600. This was in the days before cell phones and roadside assistance services. They got the alternator fixed, but then the truck wouldn’t start, and they were on level ground. They rigged up a ramp and tried to push-start the truck, finally doing so right as it got to the end of the ramp.

In looking at one of his friends who got a job right out of high school and stuck with it, Mr. Gabbert said, “I wasn’t ready to give up my childish things.” He said that he joined the Army because he watched World War II movies as a kid and always wanted to be a soldier. But he didn’t fit in well at the Army, as he was 10 years older than most of the other servicemen.

On the other hand, it was one of the easier jobs he ever had. It was during the height of the Cold War, he was stationed in Germany, and, “Our job was making things dirty and cleaning them again.” The Army pushed recreational activities because, as Mr. Gabbert said, “It was better than having solders being drunk on the base all the time.” A local German sports club let him play sports with them, and he learned he had talent as a singer and as an actor. The local theatres were always short of men, and they were always glad to have him.

Mr. Gabbert met his wife, Ellen, who worked at the Department of Defense. “She keeps me from flying too close to the sun,” Mr. Gabbert said. When she was transferred to Panama, he went with her and took up beekeeping again. Beekeeping was a boom or bust proposition; when the weather and the markets were good, they were really good; however, one can go a few years without turning a profit.

In the late 1990’s, changes came to the industry. Invasive pests meant that the bees he was using had trouble with disease, and at one point, the market fell through the floor as demand for honey cratered. So Mr. Gabbert went back to school and learned computer programming, which he still does to this day, although he still does beekeeping on the side. His job involves programming equipment for the railroad industry and then training operators how to use it, which requires a lot of travel on his part. It isn’t his first time working on the railroad; a chance encounter at Fern’s Drive-In led him to a job working on the railroad shortly after he graduated.

While most of his work is on the continent, Mr. Gabbert has worked in Egypt and Saudi Arabia and has had friends from all over the world. “Egypt has some of the friendliest people in the world,” said Mr. Gabbert. While hard at programming software for large machines, Mr. Gabbert and one of his best assistants, Niaz, fixed them up as well, which led one of his Saudi friends to say that he couldn’t believe a “softie,” which is a nickname for a computer programmer, could fix things up. “I was a farmer long before I was a softie,” said Mr. Gabbert. “If we saw things that needed fixed, we fixed them.”

Mr. Gabbert said that kids were lucky at Worth County to be able to participate in everything. In the school where he lives at, it is bigger than all the schools in the GRC combined and students have to choose a single focus. “I was able to try out everything and see what I was good at,” he said.

This year’s gathering collected $212 from the plate. They received a $50 donation for the scholarship fund. There were 33 graduates and three guests at this year’s gathering. The oldest class member attending was Clark Stabe of the Class of 1955. The Gabbert family had the most members present with three. The farthest away was Doug Gabbert from Florida. There were five members from the Class of 1965, five from the Class of 1971, and four from the Class of 1976. The Class of 1976 had a reunion at the Golf Clubhouse Saturday.

The next Alumni Reunion will be Sunday, June 27th, 2027 at 12:45 pm at the School.

 

 

Douglas Gabbert to Speak at Worth County Alumni Reunion

Douglas Gabbert will speak at the Worth County Alumni Reunion that will be held on Sunday, June 28th, 2026. The dinner will start at 12:30 in the Worth County School Cafeteria and will be followed by the program. 

Mr. Gabbert graduated from Worth County in the bicentennial year of 1976. He was introduced to honeybees by a Florida friend of the family shortly after graduation. After two years at Northwest, he took up the life of migratory beekeeper. He wintered in Florida and migrated to Missouri, North Dakota, or Iowa during the summers until he joined the Army in 1986.

Before he finished his four-year enlistment, he met and married his wife Ellen, a Department of Defense school teacher who blessed him with two daughters. After several years in Germany, she was transferred to Panama City (Panama), where Douglas tended to his daughters while his wife worked. He returned to beekeeping, enabling his wife to end her service with the Department of Defense Schools, move back to the states, and concentrate on raising their daughters.

Seeking a lifestyle with less time away from his wife and children, Douglas went back to school to learn computer programming, a skill that in 2000 landed him his current job at Contemporary Machinery & Engineering Services in Flagler Beach (FL) where he automates machines for the railroad industry.

He is a member of the Cedarhurst Church of Christ in Jacksonville (FL) where he is on a rotation to preach the gospel once a month. He still dabbles in bees and dreams of raising a garden, stocking ponds, and having some livestock on his portion of the family farm near Oxford.

Worth County Alumni Attendance List

Class of 1953: Barb Stephenson

Class of 1955: Clark Stabe

Class of 1960: Elaine Stabe

Class of 1964: Edith (Weddle) Miller; David Hardy

Class of 1965: Mary Kay Hunt

Class of 1966: Carolyn (Lynch) Hardy

Class of 1968: Sue (Ruckman) Adcock

Class of 1971: Richard Williams; Rosa (Harding) Williams; Judith Matteson

Class of 1974: Dan Weddle DVM; Kenneth Mullock

Class of 1975: Colleen (Costin) Mullock; Cindy Maxwell; Jeanie (Maudlin) Schmidt; Mike Groom; Elaine Owens; Mark Carr; Burton Miller

Class of 1976: Kathy Neal White

Class of 1977: Lora (Fletchall) Kent

Class of 1979: Patty Rinehart Mitchell

Class of 1990: Julia (Hardy) Wideman

Class of 2009: Josh Kollitz

Visitors: Kristy Weddle; Kay Shaver; Mary Beth Carr; Jesse Stark; Gary Adcock

 

Dr. Mark Carr Talks Rocketry at Alumni Reunion

Dr. Mark Carr of the Worth County Class of 1975 gave a talk about his love of rocketry Sunday at the Worth County Alumni Reunion. Only 25 alums and 5 guests attended; they missed out on a big talk about the impact that a teacher can have on one’s life.

Dr. Carr started off in Allendale Elementary School, then went to Worth County when it was closed and graduated in 1975. He went to Northwest Missouri State and then continued his studies to become a dentist. He served in the Army Reserve from 1981 to 1988. He started off in Worth County and then moved his practice, opening an office in Plattsburg and then Cameron, where he stayed until he retired in 2022.

He described growing up in Allendale as easy-going, with kids allowed to go to the East Fork and run around wherever they pleased. His family has had roots in Allendale since 1869. They thought of Grant City as “high society” and didn’t want to go to school there, especially when they could walk to school.

His first grade teacher was Mrs. Dawson, and then he hit it off with his second and third grade teacher, Pansy Rinehart. She sparked a love of science in Mark as she talked about how the Indians used to make fires just by rubbing two sticks together. He could never do it, but the World Book Encyclopedia showed how to make a fire with a magnifying glass. From then, his bedroom turned into a science lab.

Mrs. Rinehart’s classes in second and third grade consisted of insects, moths, butterflies, spiders, planets, stars, the sun, and space exploration.

He was close with his brother, the late Brad Carr, who could tell a story about every block in Allendale.

The Space Race was on in the early 1960’s and President John F. Kennedy chose to go to the Moon in response to the USSR launch  of Sputnik in 1957. In 1963, Kennedy was assassinated and the teachers came to the kids in tears with the tragic news and sent everyone home.

More tragedy struck at the end of 1963; one of the teachers at Allendale was killed in a wreck; in response; the county board abruptly closed the Allendale school, which had been housed in the same building since 1869, and sent everyone to Grant City.

Mrs. Eighmy was Dr. Carr’s third grade teacher for the remainder of the year. She treated students to one of her gooseberry tart recipes, and once took them on a field trip to her house to see her doll collection.

Mrs. Waldeier, in fourth grade, was always interested in what her kids had to share with her. Carr learned how to use a microscope. The science experiments at home continued. Carr made gunpowder and cinnamon sticks, leaving his clothes smelling of both.

In his sixth grade year, Carr and Mrs. Rinehart were reunited and there were rocket launch competitions in full blast. Carr and Burt Miller were in competition with each other. Back in those days, mail order rocket kits were available, with the biggest being a Big Bertha that Burton ordered. One day, they had a big rocket launch east of the school. Burton’s rocket launched on the west side and landed on the east side of the football field. Despite Mrs. Rinehart making him change his, it only made things more interesting. Mark’s rocket launched, returned to the ground, only for the second stage to launch, and somehow shot right through the crowd without hitting anyone. A kid tried to grab the rocket, only for Mark to stop them, because the third stage was about to launch. It then launched and landed east of the football field.

In 1970, Rinehart went to Florda to visit NASA and several scientists agreed to come to the school and give a talk. Carr was dressed up in an actual spacesuit as they gave a talk about the space shuttle, which was then in development.

On September 10th, 1970, more tragedy struck the Carr household as a fire destroyed the home. Carr remembered returning home from school that day and the first thing he saw was the fireman poking at the wall of the house and knocking it in.

He didn’t go to school the next day, but the community rallied in support of the Carr family, holding a shower for them on Monday in which people overwhelmed them with gifts to restart.

They rebuilt their lives and Mark moved in with his grandmother Margaret Carr. He took her to church, mowed her yard, took care of her, and she allowed him to continue his science experiments and launch rockets in her yard. The late Jerry Litton planned to nominate him for the Air Force Academy if he were to be elected, but he was killed in a plane crash on the night of his primary victory in 1976.

Carr went to Northwest after he graduated Worth County and then to dental school, becoming a dentist in 1985. He struck up a friendship with fellow dentist Dr. Ed Myers, who was more of a artist than a scientist. Throughout his time as a dentist, Dr. Carr never gave up his love for rocketry and even got featured twice on Discovery. He and Dr. Myers both got their certification in rocketry, first with level 1, then level 2, and then level 3. Level 2 certifications allowed one to launch rockets 10,000 feet high.

One of their projects was to build the world’s largest bottle rocket. It took half a day to build the rocket and was a major job to build the pop bottle.

Dr. Carr’s supreme effort was to go for the Guiness Book of World Records for the greatest height for a rocket of 4” in diameter. The record at the time was 40,000 feet. The rocket launched at over three times the speed of sound, but it was made with the same fuel that caused the explosion of the Challenger in 1986. Sure enough, at 37,400 feet, it exploded after the fluid leaked through the O-rings similar to what happened to the Challenger. For the next hour, Dr. Carr had to contend with debris falling down from the sky, although he was able to recover all the important items.

He has started his own rocket club near Cameron, at which 250 people showed up at one of his meets recently. He has come back to Worth County to give talks to kids about rocketry. Since his retirement from dentistry, he has taken up woodworking, inspired by Dick VanVactor.

Dr. Carr noted that Dr. Myers, the man who was more of an artist than a scientist, got into rocketry himself and is now a rocket teacher in his own right.

Dr. Carr noted that the recent Chinese spy rocket that flew over the US a few years ago passed right over Cameron and that he would have shot it down with permission.

At the reunion, he showed off three of the rockets that he uses and has launched many times.

The scholarships for this year went to McKenzie Walter and Eliza Corey.

Copies of the Alumni Book are on sale. They have all the Worth County and Grant City grads from 1885 to the present date, including births, deaths, marriages, veterans, and a tribute to Glenn Miller. Proceeds from the sale of these books go exclusively towards scholarships.

Josh Daniels, whose real name is Josh Kollitz, was the youngest grad present, from 2009. He performed three songs as the opening act.

Treasurer Rosa Williams reported there was $2,508 in the bank plus over $10,000 in the CD. Barb Stephenson was the oldest guest, from the Class of 1953. The Hardy family had the most members present with three. Mike Groom came from the farthest away, 265 miles, from Galesburg (IL).

Julia Wideman gave an update about the Vietnam Memorial Wall that Worth County has that lists the names of all 1,400+ people from Missouri who were killed in the Vietnam conflict, including two from Worth County. It will travel twice to St. Joseph to help with fundraisers for the Missouri Veterans Home in Cameron.

 

 

Dr. Mark Carr to Speak at Worth County Alumni Reunion

Dr. Mark L. Carr grew up in Allendale, Missouri, and attended his first three years of school in the Allendale village school.   The Allendale school and several other rural schools were then consolidated into the Worth County R-1 school system.  Mark graduated from the Worth County R-1 school in 1975, and he went on to receive a degree in Biology at Northwest Missouri State University.  With his interest in health care, he applied and was accepted into dental school at the University of Missouri at Kansas City School of Dentistry, where he received his Doctor of Dental Surgery Degree in 1985.  Mark purchased the Grant City practice of Dr. Bill Barker and also opened a practice in Plattsburg, Missouri.  In 1981, Mark opened a dental practice in Cameron, Missouri where he resides and practiced for 37 years.

Mark served in the United States Army Reserves from 1981 to 1988, first as a Combat Medic, and later as a Dentist.  

Mark was always interested in science, being inspired by his 3rd and 6th grade teacher, Pansy Rinehart, and he has also continued building rockets, as Pansy had taught him.  Mark competed in rocketry competitions that were sponsored by the Discovery Channel and was featured on two Discovery Channel programs showcasing his rockets. 

Mark retired from dentistry in 2022 and keeps busy with woodworking, as inspired by Mr. Dick VanVactor, and rocketry as inspired by Pansy Rinehart.  He is also busy with Cameron City Council business, golf, family history, travel, and Grandchildren.  

Mark is married to Mary Beth Steinhauser of Sheridan Missouri and they have been married for 44 years. They have four children: John, Laura, Emily and Andrew. 

 

Dr. Dan Weddle Talks of Mother’s Life as German POW

At the Worth County Alumni Reunion Sunday, Dr. Dan Weddle of the Class of 1974 talked about his mother and her life in a German Prisoner of War camp during World War II on the eastern front. 

The Class of 1964 donated the drinks and the gold plated service for the Class of 1974. Tucker Owens, a member of the Class of 2023, performed some songs. Richard Williams opened with a prayer.

Weddle attended North Harrison through the fifth grade; then, his family moved over the line and he attended Worth County the rest of his school years. He said the two biggest role models of his life were his dad and Coach Don Reece. He said that Reece always taught his boys to do your job, do your best, and be a gentleman whether you won or lost. Weddle said he would look up Reece afterwards. 

At Northwest, Weddle roomed with Ron Walker, Doyle Fisher, and Bob McNeese and met his wife, Kristy, there as well. He then went to vet school at Mizzou, married Kristy along the way, and graduated from there in 1981. Along the way, he met Steve Goff and partnered with him before starting a practice in Mount Ayr. Weddle, Ken Hunt, and Keith Miller partnered and Dr. Goff joined them in 1988, opening an office in Grant City that he ran until 2006. 

In 2020, Weddle sold his practice, but is still working. He had two children, Janice and Katie along with two grandchildren.

But it was his mother that Dr. Weddle wanted to talk about. She was born in the former Soviet Union and grew up in Mariupol, scene of some of the most brutal fighting between Russia and Ukraine in 2022 in the current war. One of her relatives was sent off to the gulags by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, but when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, she joined the Red Army and became a sniper. She was wounded and captured in front of Stalingrad, but before she was, she had assumed the identity of a nurse. 

She was taken to a factory in Poland, where she was forced to make ammunition for the German war effort. Conditions were horrible, with prisoners issued one loaf a week, along with a daily ration of thin soup, cabbage, and possibly a potato. Sometimes, prisoners would eat the whole loaf of bread by the time they got back to their barracks. Typhoid fever and other diseases were common. 

But the Soviets started fighting back and Weddle’s mother was transferred to Dachau, where there were other Russians, Jews, and prisoners of war that the Germans had captured. They were liberated in 1945 by the Americans. It was Earl Hardy’s unit who liberated the camp; he was the father of David Hardy. 

Weddle’s dad, meanwhile, had participated in the D-Day invasion and wound up in southern Germany, where she met. Dr. Weddle’s older brother was born there in 1946, and they returned to the US in 1946. Weddle’s mother was fluent in French and several other languages, but didn’t understand English, which meant that conversations around the household were in French when they were first married. Subsequently, they started a farm near Hatfield.

Weddle’s mother tried for many years to restore contact with her Russian family, but the Iron Curtain descended over Russia and Eastern Europe following the war, and it was difficult to get mail through. Finally, she got a letter back from her mother and uncle, who had moved to what is now Moldavia following the war, and they corresponded in Russian until her death in 1974, when they lost contact.

But in 1991, a letter came from Russia to the Grant City Post Office, and Loretta Rinehart, the postmaster at the time, went out of her way to get it forwarded to Dr. Weddle, and he was able to get some of his wife’s relatives sponsored into the US in 1992, and they subsequently got their citizenship.

“My dad always told me I was half Russian and a half wit,” said Dr. Weddle.

Carolyn Jones, who was in attendance, said to Dr. Weddle, “Alice Miller told us all about your mom. She told us she was one of the smartest people she ever met. She said that if certain boys would go to Russia for two weeks, they would come back and say, ‘God Bless America!’”

Around $369 was collected Sunday to cover expenses and award scholarships. The Alumni Association is looking for people to serve. Carolyn Hardy, who emceed the reunion, marked her 40th year of service to the Worth County Alumni Association. 

Scholarships this year went to Autumn Cousatte and Brylea Rush. There were 38 people in attendance and six guests. Barbara Stephenson was the oldest person in attendance, from the Class of 1953. The Hardy family had four members present. David Howard of Jamestown (NY) came from the farthest away, around 1,000 miles. The class with the most people in attendance was the Class of 1974, with 11 present out of a total of 32 members.

Doris Monday, at 103, Honored at Worth County Alumni Reunion

Doris Monday, at 103 years young, was honored at the Worth County Alumni Reunion Sunday. She graduated from the Class of 1937. She went to school with Doc Swift, and she had teachers like Berniece Faubion (Grammar), Sadie Simmons (History), Glenn Marr, and Ollie Erickson. 

She remembers Rainbow Park well, including the pool, the building where they had music shows, the ferris wheel, and the ball park. “I’m blessed to be able to halfway function,” said Monday. “I’m not sure I’m going to make it another year, so I thought I’d better come.” Monday will turn 104 in August and is one of Worth County’s oldest residents. Wilbur Osborne, at 106, is Worth County’s oldest living resident. The oldest Worth Countian ever was Maude Logan, who lived to be 108 and passed away in the 1980’s.

At 103, Doris Monday can still take care of herself, drive a car, and can still make pies. She is a fixture in Sunday School classes at the Allendale Baptist Church.

Bill Lutes, who graduated from the Worth County Class of 1953, was the second oldest person present, sneaking in late. He and a lot of other kids used to go swimming in his dad’s pond during summers, after Rainbow Park was taken down and donated to the war effort during World War 2 and before the current pool was built later that decade. He was a fixture on the football teams of those years under Glenn Marr, whose son, Ted, was present.

Richard Williams opened the event with prayer. Carolyn Hardy emceed the event as always. 

The Alumni Association awarded three scholarships this time. Lance Abplanalp was awarded the vocational scholarship, while Paige and Kaydee Sherer were awarded the other two scholarships. 

Tucker Owens was unable to be there for the reunion, so teacher Julia Wideman gave a talk about her work organizing the annual Veterans Day program at the school, including the building of the Memorial Wall. It is similar to the Vietnam Memorial and includes all 1,428 people from Missouri who were killed in action in Vietnam. 

Wideman talked about how the students were able to celebrate our veterans over the years, including a real-life replica of Iwo Jima, a reenactment of Lee Teter’s “Reflections” picture, of a broken-hearted businessman at the Vietnam Memorial grieving for a loved one and soldiers from beyond the grave reaching out and comforting him. 

She also talked about the year in which students got to wear the uniforms of family members who had served in the military. She played Tucker Owens’ original song, “I Need a Hero,” played at one of the Veterans Day celebrations at the school with David Wideman, in his grandfather’s World War 2 uniform, sitting beside him. 

Jason Davidson of the Class of 1997 reflected on the people he grew up with who made him who he is today. He mentioned Victor Bollinger, the long-time pastor at Allendale; Vicki and Joker Miller, who created a family friendly place for kids to come to on Saturday nights at the Pool Hall; Randy James, who maintains cemeteries around the county; Debbie Roach, who has done a lot of work behind the scenes to make the community better; and teachers like Edith Fletchall, Vonda Terry, Mary Kay Hunt, Clella Goodwin, Scott Darrach, Doyle Bounds, and Dale and Joanna Healy. “It’s fitting that Chris and April Healy are continuing what Dale and Joanna have done for the school over the years,” said Davidson. “It doesn’t matter who you are; anyone can be successful in life.” He has worked at several TV stations, starting with KQ2, and still gets people who remember him from his TV days. Now, he runs a successful advertising firm and has made almost 5,000 ads.

There were 28 graduates and 11 guests present. There were six alumni books sold for a total of $180, and collections totaled another $139. The Davidson family had the most people present from one family. The classes with the most attendance were the classes of 1965 and 1971. Ed Roberts of Harrisonville was the farthest away.

Judy Beauchamp Hunt Speaks at 2022 Alumni Reunion

Judy Beauchamp Hunt spoke at the Worth County Alumni Reunion Sunday; she was a member of the Class of 1972. 48 students graduated from that class, which marked its 50th anniversary Saturday at the Skating Rink. 

Worth County grad Lincoln Moore played his saxophone for the assembly. He can play 16 different instruments. He played the piano for the concert choir, which shocked his own mother, who didn’t realize that he could play the piano. Moore is continuing to pursue his passion for music; he is in college and is planning to become a music teacher.

Emcee Carolyn Hardy announced that yearbooks from last year were sold out. New yearbooks have been printed, this time adding the date of death when known. Eight were sold Sunday. Molly Miller and Cheyenne Fairchild were awarded scholarships by the alumni association.

Judy Beauchamp Hunt is the daughter of the late Shelby and Norma Beauchamp, who lived on the farm at the junction between 169 and the roads that lead to Worth and Denver, five miles south of Grant City. “I miss them every day,” she said. Her sister Vickie and brother Ron also graduated from Worth County.

Following graduation, she enrolled at Northwest Missouri State and completed a one year secretarial certificate in May 1973. She started her work career in the loan department of Provident Savings & Loan in June 1973 and worked in various jobs while raising her two sons, Jared and Ryan.

She returned to college at Missouri Western in 1999, graduating in 2004 with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems and a Business minor. She was awarded an Outstanding Graduate in CIS from the Math & Computer Science Department.

She began working for Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica as a Marketing Specialist in the Cattle Product Division, later transferring to the Private Label Produce Division. She retired in 2018.

Judy is married to Bob Hunt, and together, they are enjoying retirement, spending time with their blended family of two sons, two daughters, their spouses, and four grandchildren as well as traveling and other hobbies.

Hunt said that she felt so blessed to grow up in Worth County, with so many giving and caring people. She watched how her parents and the people around her actively invested time and resources in the kids. Her parents taught her early on how to have a relationship with Jesus.

She started in first grade in 1960 when the elementary was still on High Street and Mrs. Neva Waldeier was their teacher. They were taught phonics, and they were expected to color their workbooks and missed recess if they did not get their work done on time. Hunt said that it was a very effective method of learning. She met people in St. Joseph who couldn’t read well. 

In second grade, Hunt’s teacher was Mrs. Pansy Rinehart. She did lots of math drills and wrote multiplication drills. They had a mock grocery store, where there were shoppers, cashiers, and stockers, and they had to apply their math knowledge. 

In sixth grade, they moved to the main building, where there were two buildings in what was the northernmost wing of the school building. They didn’t have to ride back and forth to lunch every day. They could now interact with the high school kids instead of just look on them from afar.

By ninth grade, there were 58 class members and they got to make their own Homecoming floats. In their sophomore year, they thought that they had the perfect float with the theme, “We’ve got ‘em trained!” It was called the Victory Express and it came complete with a smokestack. The problem was that the float caught on fire and burned. But they went on to win in 1970 and 1971. 

Hunt talked about the support they had from their sponsors, Norma Maudlin and Mary Ellen Kimble. They finally got to decorate the gym for prom, and they turned it into an island paradise and even covered up the ceiling.

The class of 1972 had its share of tragedy, including the time they lost Mark Findley. On May 12th, 1972, 48 students graduated with the motto, “We’ve only just begun,” which was a popular song during that time. The class flower was the rose and the class colors were red and white. 

Hunt talked about the people who were part of their lives, including teachers Bob Newman, Hazel Michael, Pat Newland, 4-H sponsors Don and Lois Null, and the many others who were part of 4-H. She got her first job at Fern’s Drive-In, which was open until 1 am back in those days, and her dad would get up at 1 in the morning so he could pick her up and bring her home. The pay was 50 cents an hour. 

She said there were only three certainties in life, death, taxes, and eternity. She said that the gospel message of Jesus was the only thing of eternal value and that Jesus accepted the penalty for our sins.

There were 39 members present and 9 guests. Evelyn Groom was the oldest person present, from the Class of 1948. The biggest family was the Hardy family, with 6 graduates present. The farthest away was Ben Ray, who came from Colorado. The class with the most grads present was the Class of 1972 with 6. There was $232 donated Sunday during the collection and eight books sold.

Judy Beauchamp Hunt to Speak at Worth County Alumni Reunion

The 67th Worth County Annual Alumni Reunion will be Sunday June 26th, 2022 at  12:30

Carry in lunch, local talent, business meeting and great fun! Judy Beauchamp Hunt will be the speaker. Hope you can attend! 

Judy Beauchamp Hunt, daughter of Shelby and Norma,  grew up on a farm five miles south of Grant City,  and lived there with her parents, sister Vickie (class of 1975), and brother Ron (class of 1979), until her graduation from Worth County R-II in 1972. 

Following graduation, Judy enrolled in Northwest Missouri State University and completed a One Year Secretarial Certificate in May 1973. She started her work career in the loan department of Provident Savings and Loan in St. Joseph, Missouri in June 1973 and worked in various jobs while raising her two sons, Jared and Ryan. 

She returned to college at Missouri Western State College in St. Joseph in the fall of 1999, and graduated in May 2004 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Information Systems (CIS) and a Business minor. She was awarded Outstanding Graduate in CIS from the Math & Computer Science Department. 

Judy began working for Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica, Inc. (BIVI) in 2004 as a Marketing Specialist in the Cattle Product Division, later transferring to the Private Label Product Division. She enjoyed the opportunities, challenges, and her colleagues there until her retirement at the end of 2018. 

Judy is married to Bob Hunt and together they are enjoying retirement, spending time with their blended family of two sons, two daughters, their spouses, and four grandchildren, as well as traveling and other hobbies.