Doris M. Beard

Doris M. Beard (nee: Shelton), 95, of Lake Saint Louis, died on October 27, 2024. Doris was born in St. Louis, Mo., in 1929 and graduated from Rosati-Kane Catholic Academy on Lindell Boulevard. 

After graduation, she worked in a hospital but could not afford nursing school. She became a wife and homemaker when she met the handsome John M. Beard, a North Carolinian Airman First Class, who was stationed at Scott Air Force Base. They married in 1952 when she was 22 and he was 20. John herded Doris and her family into the basement of her sister’s house so he could argue upstairs loudly on the phone with his guardian uncle in North Carolina, demanding permission to marry, which he received. 

Doris and John married and proceeded through many subsequent life adventures. They were stationed in Japan during the Korean War, then moved to California where they bought a 40-foot sailboat, built in 1931, to sail the Catalina Islands. Called “The Dubloon,” the boat served for a year as home to John, Doris, their first infant daughter, Nancy, and their dachshund, Puppy. 

A second daughter, Julie, was born in Palo Alto, and the family moved back to St. Louis. Eventually, Doris and John resumed sailing in 1970 when they moved to a new community called Lake Saint Louis. This followed an ill-advised move to Guadalajara, Mexico, that lasted less than a month. (They had neglected to learn Spanish.) Oh, the memories! Another later adventure included a stint as artistic painters of full-sized conversion vans in the 1970’s. They taught themselves to airbrush large paintings on the panels of vans converted by Doris’s nephews. Their artistic renderings included mermaids on rocks and tranquil sunsets. The money John and Doris earned funded Julie’s college degree. 

Doris was active as a crew member when John captained his Y-Flyer in Lake Saint Louis Regattas, and they made many dear and lifelong friends in the Sailing Club. Doris was also a very devoted and talented golfer. She won a St. Louis women’s amateur championship as well as other competitions in St. Charles County. 

She was a loving grandmother to William Brown, Jr., Blair Brown, Matthew Brown, Connor Johnson, and Maddie Johnson, as well as to her grandchildren-of-the-heart, Jaqi Brown, Jennifer Brown, and Riki Brown. She will be missed by Nancy and Bill Brown, Julie and Dale Johnson, and Rik and Aiko Brown, the Lake Saint Louis crew who loved her to the end. She appreciated decades of love from the Eversons, Hachs, Mayses, Schoenes, and Schroeders.

 A funeral committal ceremony will be held on Friday, November 29, at 10:30 a.m. in the chapel at Our Lady Cemetery in Lake Saint Louis. 

If anyone wishes to honor Doris, in lieu of flowers, please donate to The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (www.ASPCA.org). 

The family would like to thank Solace Hospice Care for dropping everything on quick notice to attend to Doris’s needs. Thanks, also, to the caring staff and her wonderful friends at The Boulevard Senior Living of Wentzville, where Doris lived for the last 5 years of her life.