Beverly Tate

On the morning of August 8, 2008, our beloved Wife and Mother Beverly Mae Tate passed gently away surrounded by her loving family. Her last gaze was through the window of her home looking at her wild bird friends and the serene waters of Erskine Lake. Beverly loved her home and family with a passion that poets can only attempt to describe, and her family and friends and plants and trees and animals would all glow with happiness that her radiant presence would instill within them and us. And nobody but nobody could make a better potato salad or cook a better Sunday chicken dinner or pick a more delicious bowl of raspberries from her garden. Beverly was born in Milo Township, Milaca, Minnesota on August 13, 1928 to Mable and Elmer Rosenberg. She attended a country elementary school and then went on to graduate from Milaca High School on May 29, 1947 and worked for several years as a Bell telephone operator in the days of switch board call routing. And it was in Milaca where she met her future husband, Donald Tate who fell off of one of her horses and broke his arm on one of their first dates (he completed the ride before realizing that he had fractured his arm). They were married in Milaca on September 24, 1949 which was also the year that they purchased their lake cabin on Erskine Lake in Southern Crow Wing County where they eventually moved to in 1967 from Coon Rapids. Beverly enjoyed all types of gardening and landscaping as well as riding horses, bicycles, snowmobiles, and pontoon boats. She was an aggressive cross-country skier, traversing many remote and wild areas of the woods and swamps around Erskine Lake. She was also an avid deer hunter and many seasons shot the only venison for the family supper board; however, there were times when she would exasperate her fellow hunters by not taking a good shot because “the deer winked at me with such beautiful eyes.” In her younger days she would also hunt pheasants in the Milaca area, and she enjoyed fishing very much. She would never lose at the games of Blackjack, Solitaire or Croquet “The Family Game.” Beverly is survived by her husband of fifty-nine years, Donald; sons Steven of Hillman and friend Judy “Blue-eyes” Waters of St. Cloud, MN; Neil of Sendai, Japan, and friend Denise Dallas of Onamia, MN; daughter Cheryl Anderson of Aitkin, MN; son Thomas of Hillman, MN; sister Marjorie Besser and her husband George of St. Cloud; sister Mary and her husband Bob Daniels of Minneapolis; sister-in-law Muriel and her husband Cal Hawley of Rochester, MN; sister-in-law Willma Rosenberg of Milaca; and many nieces and nephews; and her brown dogs MudDog and AmpDog and a little orphan cat Wiley. Beverly was preceded in death by her Mother and Father and brothers Glen, Theodore and Kenneth; and beloved son-in-law John V. Anderson. We all miss you dearly Mommy Tate, and we know that you are walking happily through a field of wild flowers with happy creatures basking in the warm sunshine of Love.

Tributes

Beverly Tate

August 13, 1928 - August 8, 2008