Marian Pearl (Sebring) BROOKS

BROOKS, SEBRING, YOUNG, CHELESVIG, BACHMAN

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 7/6/2007 at 11:25:22

BELMOND — Marian Brooks, 87, died Wednesday (May 6, 1998) at the Belmond Community Hospital, Belmond. Memorial services will be held at 11 a.m. Wednesday at the United Methodist Church, Belmond, with the Rev. Ken Fineran officiating. Burial will take place at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday at the Rose Hill Cemetery, Eagle Grove. Visitation will be from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Tenold Funeral Home, Belmond.

Marian Pearl (Sebring) Brooks was born in rural Kansas near Westmoreland on June 16, 1911. She was the daughter of Wesley and Pearl (Young) Sebring. As the only girl in a family of six, she often commented that it was very exciting to be nearly the middle child let alone the only girl among all those "bunctious" boys. Marian attend rural grade school. As high school approached, she had the opportunity to move to town and board with a family so that she could attend high school at Westmoreland, Kan. She soon became Westmoreland’s "basketball belle" when as a 4-foot-11-inch freshman girls basketball rookie, she sunk the only score for two points in the 100 to 2 loss to Westmoreland’s arch rival. The team went on to glory and became back-to-back state basketball champions in Marian’s junior and senior years of high school. She was named to the Kansas State Girls Basketball Hall of Fame in the 1970s and at that time still held a state basketball record. Marian had to forego her lifelong dream of becoming a nurse because of the Depression and the need for her to return home to help. She taught in the school system in rural Kansas, meeting another rural school teacher who was destined to become her soul mate for the next 60 years. She and Carroll Wright Brooks were married at Westmoreland on March 14, 1934. The couple farmed the Brooks’ family farm while Carroll attended Kansas State University which was just a few miles away in Manhattan, Kan. Carroll graduated in 1940, and their daughter, Carolyn Kay (Caye) was born in 1941. The couple moved to South Dakota for a short time, but after Pearl Harbor, they moved to California to be part of the war effort in San Diego at Consolidated Aircraft. After the war, the couple moved back to the Midwest, first to Kansas then to Iowa. They spent several years in Spencer, and then moved to Eagle Grove in 1951. In 1989, they moved to Belmond to be close to their daughter. Marian’s life emphasis has been as the family "care giver." She cared for her parents while they lived, her brothers while they were at home, her husband when he was ill, her daughter, her grandchildren and the special joys of her life, her great-grandchildren.

Marian is survived by her daughter, Caye Chelesvig, and her husband, Jim, of Belmond; her granddaughter, Shelley, and her two sons, Chandler Wright Bachman and Jameson Brooks Bachman, all of Belmond; her grandson, Brooks James Chelesvig, of Chicago, Ill.; and one sister-in-law, Helen (Mrs. Charles) Sebring, of Wichita, Kan. She was preceded in death by her parents; her husband, Carroll in 1993; and five brothers, Emerson, Charles, twins Robert and Ralph, and Ernest.

May 11, 1998
Mason City (Iowa) Globe Gazette