Elizabeth May (Bereman) Sanders
25 March 1912 – 21 March 2005
Elizabeth May (Bereman) Sanders was born 25 March 1912 in Holyoke, Phillips County, Colorado. She was the daughter of Earl Wilson Bereman and Esther Myrtle (Crater) Bereman. Beth married Edward Julian Sanders on 26 February 1945 in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois. Sandy was born 28 December 1900 in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, and died 18 March 1969 in Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan.
Beth=s ancestry, in many known branches, was American. At least 31 of the 65 9th generation ancestors we know anything at all about are known to have been born, in the 1600s, in what is now the United States. Each of us has a total of 512 9th generation ancestors, and it is likely that many of Beth=s of whom we know nothing were also born on this continent.
As an example, Beth=s father=s line B the Bereman/Berriman/Berrymans B can be reliably traced back to a tailor/rancher who lived in what is now New York City by at least 1667. BRMN direct ancestors served in the Revolutionary War, and most of an entire family of her direct BRMN ancestors, including the mother of that family, served in the Civil War.
In the years after 1667 the BRMN family moved from New York City to New Jersey, then on to Kentucky, then to Iowa, then to Colorado. Beth=s first seven years or so were spent growing up in Holyoke, Colorado, but then the family moved to Denver.
Between Beth's Sophomore and Junior years at the University of Colorado she taught in a oneroom school house in Eckley, Colorado. After graduating from UC, she taught in Colorado High Schools, first La Veta, then Douglas County. The subjects she taught were varied: Latin, English, Math, History, even Home Economics and Typing. She also was coach for Junior and Senior class plays.
In l941, with her entire Senior class of boys planning to enlist, she left teaching and started working for the Federal Government in Washington, D.C. She worked first at the Treasury Department as an apportioned appointee from Colorado, where she started at GS1 and spent two months counting "dirty" (retired) money before it was discovered that she had a college degree and could type. At that time, she was transferred to the Steno Pool, and moved quickly up to the Fraud and Forgery Division where she worked until l945 as a reviewer. During that time the office moved to Chicago, and it was there she met and married Edward Sanders. For a while she was at home taking care of Jack, but in 1949 she returned to work, and soon was with the Agriculture Department.
After a brief time checking grain grading certificates, she was selected to enter Data Processing. She started as a programmer, moved to system analysis and ended up as a manager in the system supporting the agriculture commodity support and accounting programs. To qualify for this, she had to take the Chicago Board of Trade course on "Grain and Its Marketing". Later she transferred to the Treasury Department where she managed the payroll system for some 350,000 people, the Taxpayer Compliance Management Program, the creation of Statistics of Income Reports for the Census Bureau, and other similar programs. She retired in l976 in Detroit, Michigan, by that time having become one of the highest ranking women in the federal civil service.
After her retirement, Beth (who had never before left North America) fulfilled her dream of traveling the world. By the time of her death, she had visited at least 43 countries on all seven continents (including the tip of Antarctica). Her most recent international journey was to St. Lucia, in the Carribean, where she attended the wedding of her granddaughter Erica, in April of 2004.
Beth had in 1988 moved to Penfield, New York, to be closer to her son Jack=s family. In 2003, the two homes of Beth and Jack were merged into one larger home in Honeoye Falls, New York. She died at home, as she preferred, on 21 March 2005.