Dorothy Watkins Beam

I've lived several different places sincer high school: LA, CO, and VA. I met my husband in VA and will be married 23 years Sept 2018. We have one son who will turn 19 in September 2018. We lived in the DC area during anthrax scare, 9/11 - Pentagon, and the DC shooter. My family and I returned to TX in 2005 and welcomed a slower pace than the north east.

After high school I longed to be a flight attendant only to learn I was a 1/2 inch too short. I became a reservation agent at SWA but only stayed two years. I flitted about from office jobs to waitressing to being a flight attendant on a charter craft ferrying rough necks and roust abouts from the coast of TX to LA and vice versa. I wound up making a big commitment to serve at a christian camp in Colo for 2 1/2 years and lived at 9,000 ft. It was beautiful. I moved to Colo Springs and worked at a HMO. I decided to finish college and moved to Dallas and lived in the dorms as a dorm director. Then back to Colo to get a masters. I moved on from there to live in VA where I met my husband. I married at age 37, and had my son at almost age 42. My sisters are blessed with grandchildren and I'm blessed with a teenager :) Now I'm an itinerant teacher serving students with visual impairments. This ranges from blurry vision (low vision) to blindness to multiple disabilities with a visual impairment. "Life's been good to me so far."

Some school stories have been funny and a learning experience. Let's just say I found school to be less than interesting and liked seeing how much I could get away with. My name was the exact same name as our attendance lady, Dorothy Watkins. I got ahold of passes and wrote Debbie Smith and Lisa Buckley hall passes. They got caught but would not give me up. They narrowed it down to their friends and stumbled upon me. They said they couldn't get me for forgery but they could discipline me for mal-intent. I think that cost us all 3 days suspension. My senior prom date was a fiasco as Mike Rapovich and I had broken up but he thought he was still taking me. I wanted to go with another guy that had a girl friend - oops. I even got another guy to go with me when it looked like all options would fall through. The night before I lost all prospects and Debbie Hillman and I were in the Pizza Hut parking lot as I cried my eyes out and she tried to console me. We laugh about it now. I ended up going with the boy with a girlfriend, Mark Wilson (where is he now?, Debbie and I wonder).
A real learning experience was after I had joined the drill team and drama and was leaving behind my mischevious ways. I skipped school to go visit a friend that had dropped out and had just had a baby. Ms. Tomlinson called me in and asked where I had been so I told her. First she said I was old enough now to decide whether I was coming to school or not and she was not calling my parents. She asked if I wanted the same life as the friend I had visited and I was like, of course not. She said that's where I was headed if I didn't buckle down. I lost my second lieutenantship on the drill team but she knew not to kick me off since it was one of the things that was keeping me at school. I should thank her personally. It was a life saver.