Michael Beeson:
CLASS OF 1956
Colton High SchoolClass of 1956
Colton, CA
Defense Language InstituteClass of 1959
Monterey, CA
Pacific High SchoolClass of 1955
San bernardino, CA
Highland Junior High SchoolClass of 1952
Highland, CA
Highland-Pacific Elementary SchoolClass of 1949
Highland, CA
Michael's Story
Welcome - thanks for your interest in this mini-bio of mine.
Six members of my immediate family have been teachers, but I broke the mold by becoming a career psychiatric social worker; have been fully retired for 12 years now and loving it. - always busy. I have two older residences (1926 and 1965) that back up to each other, one being a rental, and each is an ongoing work-in-progress. Am single/divorced but in a 17-year committed relationship with an elegant lady from a Samurai family who has her teaching degree from the University of Osaka, She has been an ESL coach, a Japanese instructor, and an administrative assistant for Santen Pharmaceutical; She is retired from Kaiser Permanente.
My interests are: music (I play conga), art, wine/food, cars, home improvement, ,Scrabble games, cinema, and I occasionally buy/sell antiques and/or collectibles. Though I'm a dropout from the Anthony School of Real Estate, I have been involved in property management since co-managing an apartment unit in San Diego's Ocean Beach in the late 60's.
The master's degree that I received at San Diego State in 1971 (after having attended 6 different colleges in the days when education was inexpensive) led me into a number of interesting jobs over time - including being a parole agent in the mental health system, a mental hospital treatment team leader, a Child Protective Services worker, a field instructor for Sacramento State, a Big Brothers case manager, and a State licensing inspector enforcing the Calif. Code of Regulations and Health and Safety Code in the assisted living system .
I attended the Univ. of Redlands on a journalism scholarship in the late fifties, and I stay active in the writing area: am a former staff writer for the Napa Valley Museum, and I have done a little professional editing and copyreading work. I write poetry on occasion - especially in haiku style. BTW, the first time my sweetheart and I met was at a poetry workshop that instructed us in haiku technique.
In 1973 I left the San Diego beach (where I lived a couple of hundred feet fm. the Ocean Beach pier) and moved here to Yountville in the Napa Valley. Yountville, w/ a population of about 3,000, reminds me somewhat of what my my home town of Highland was like when I was growing up. After ultimately retiring from Calif. Dept. of Social Svcs. in '01 I was an art docent at Napa's Copia museum and then drove clients on wine tours in a custom 1947 Packard convertible limousine for 5 Yrs. before becoming a medical social worker for Hospice of Napa Valley - my last official employment. Working only for myself now.
Have had a few unique experiences over time - Was an usher at the first Monterey Jazz festival; while in the Army (and in uniform) hitchhiked from San Bernardino to New York City in 78 hours; have crossed the Atlantic X3 by ship ( one trip out of Southhampton resulted in lengthening the voyage by 3 days on account of a violent Atlantic storm); saw a live performance by the Stan Kenton group at the old Birdland venue in NYC when I was 16; at 18 was assigned to work in the "bull pen" maximum security unit at Patton State hospital as a psychiatric technician trainee; have met Daniel Radcliffe, Robert Redford, Debra Paget, Dizzy Gillespie, and architect Frank Geary in person; during the Cold War was briefly flown by error into East Germany in a helicopter (uneventfully, fortunately); have had several vehicles mildly customized (55 Ford 2-door, 55 Pontiac Chieftan, 59 El Camino, 77 El Camino, 76 Fiat Spyder, 98 Dodge Dakota SLT); using a check-list in '97 I ordered the Dodge Dakota directly from the factory - a 5-speed stick V8 still on the road; in beautiful Nara, Japan, I was feeding a "sacred" male deer and ran out of food whereupon he bit me on the buttocks - instinctively I punched him in the nose - thought I'd end up in jail but apparently no one noticed!; have stayed at Esalen in Big Sur and earned my "tuition" by working in the kitchen; lived in an old ranch house situated literally on the San Andreas fault - on the East Highlands "Bench" (plenty of rocking and rolling); won the Whiskerino Contest ("best beard") at the National Orange Show in the early 60's.
A few other noteworthy experiences: have taken the 1200...Expand for more
-mile Russian waterways cruise from Moscow to St. Petersburg; have cruised the Rhine and the Mosel; have hiked Kauaii's Kalalau Trail and Juneau's Mendenhall Glacier; have driven around Ireland for a month ( and visited my grandmother's home village in County Tipperary); have driven thru heavy traffic in New York, Chicago, and Dublin; have ridden a mule down the 1200-foot cliff to the leper colony on Molokai and flown into a Kauaii volcano in a Bell Jet helicopter, eaten pufferfish in Kyoto, gone grunion-hunting at night on the beach at San Clemente. For 11 years I resided in shared housing arrangements with other housemates, many of whom remain friends to this day; two of those years were in what we fancied to be a "commune" by a creek surrounded by vineyards in the early 70's.
As mentioned earlier, education was generally inexpensive "back in the day." The many part-time jobs I've held prior to ultimately becoming a mental health professional were memorable and an education in themselves: berry-picker, orange packing house swamper, yard maintenance guy,shoe salesman, dance band saxophone and conga musician, lumber-yard swamper, retail stocker, pretzel-maker, janitor, bartender in a college bar, early morning newspaper processor, rural mail carrier.
. I have one son and three grandsons ; grandsons live in Sacramento area; son lives south of Dallas/Ft. Worth. My mom, (the venerable CDB) Chris Beeson, taught journalism and English at Colton High for 40 Yrs., and she died in '98. She was married to Dr. Weynard Bailey, former Colton Unified School Dist. Sup't. of Schools, and he passed away a few Yrs. after she.
During the "Cold War" I studied Russian at the Defense Language Institute, Presidio of Monterey, from 1958 to 1959. Then from 1959 through 1961 I belonged to an elite 100-man Army unit billeted in Heidwinkel, half a mile from the East German border; we performed electronic eavesdropping on the Russian military - at a small site (Bahrdorf) near the old border crossing leading to Berlin outside of Helmstedt. Along with about a dozen other former Bahrdorf linguists I revisited our old German duty sites 9/02; we then went on to Berlin, the Hartz Mountains, Leipzig, Prague, and Munich (for the Oktoberfest).. About a dozen of us attend reunions in the US or elsewhere on an annual basis; the bonds we forged when we were kids in uniform remain strong, and we continue to treasure them. During the tour of duty our unit experienced considerable stress - We were in the "British Zone," and in case of a Communist incursion across the border we would be expendable, since the nearest combat forces were hundreds of miles away. However, no shots were ever fired, and we constantly experience awe and reverence when we think about our military brothers/sisters who in contrast to us have lost life and limb in real war zones subsequent to our own duty.
In the last decade we've been trying to get out of the country once a year, and I've visited 26 foreign countries so far. (Am a certified Europhile, so the only non-Euro countries I've seen are Japan, Cuba, Canada, Mexico, and Morocco). For the milleniium celebration I was in Paris ( imagine the Champs Elysee filled with so many revelers there was barely room to move or breathe!), Cuba was our last trip, and pending is a gourmet wine/food cruise on the Danube from Vienna to Budapest.
In the 40 Yrs. I've been in Yountville it's gradually morphed into an international destination site. It's a "walking town," with a phenomenal number of 4-star restaurants all clustered close to each other. Apparently I live in a good neighborhood, since The French Laundry"s Chef Thomas Keller is a neighbor down the street and across the creek from me. To all my old friends and acquaintances I extend my encouragement to make contact with me if you're heading out to partake of the pleasures of the Wine Country.
Cheers,
Mick Beeson
AKA Michael B. Beeson, MSW
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