Karen Jean Beckmann

Karen Jean Beckmann of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, was born January 28,1956 in Chicago, Illinois to Charles and Jessie Tatter. In 2004 she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease which caused her death on January 12, 2026.

At an early age her family moved to Homewood Illinois where Karen graduated from Homewood Flossmoor High School in 1974, and worshiped at Homewood Baptist Church. She attended Wheaton College in Illinois. She was active in concert band and choir, including tours of Europe in high school and college. She spent a summer in Ethiopia at a mission health center where she found her calling to enter the health care field as a physical therapist. After graduating from Wheaton College in 1978, she entered the Physical Therapy program at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago and graduated in 1979.

Early on, she realized her gift and calling was in pediatric physical therapy, especially developmentally delayed babies. She loved holding and working with babies. Just by holding them, her hands could tell what they needed to improve and she was especially talented at getting babies walking. Over the years, she worked in school settings in Katy, Texas and the Tulsa area with 0-3 year old babies and their parents. She loved and admired the families she worked with and they loved her back. She was fiercely committed to helping each and every one.

While in PT school she met Dennis Beckmann riding the train to school in downtown Chicago and they married in 1979. In 1982 they started a family in Illinois where daughter Liesl was born. In 1983 they moved to Tulsa for the first of three times living in Tulsa. Daughter Heidi (1985) and son Martin (1987) were born in Tulsa. Karen and Dennis were foster parents for a number of children in Tulsa and also had a foreign exchange student. They adopted Bruce in 1999 after raising him from 2 days old. Karen loved and was fiercely devoted to caring for her family.

Karen never could handle idle hands. She always had some kind of needle work to keep her hands busy while riding in the car or sitting at softball, soccer, football games, or marching band performances. In later years she gravitated to making quilts for the family. She loved taking family pictures and turning them into delightful scrapbooks to record the family stories.

The family worshipped for many years at First Lutheran Church in Tulsa where the children grew up. They also worshipped at Living Word Lutheran in Katy Texas and in recent years at Fellowship Lutheran and Immanuel Lutheran Broken Arrow.

Karen and Dennis were very active is combatting the devastating effects of Parkinson's for both Karen personally and the wider Parkinson’s Community in both Katy Texas and the Tulsa area. They were involved in support groups, Rock Steady Boxing and various educational forums related to Parkinson’s.

Karen was preceded in death by her mother and father, Jessie and Charles Tatter, and her brother Charles Tatter. She is survived by her sisters Martha and Barbara, brother Bill, husband Dennis, her children Liesl, Heidi, Martin and Bruce and nine grandchildren: Benjamin, Christopher, Raegan, Zachary, Madison, Willow, Wyatt, Cooper, and Bridgette.

In lieu of flowers, these two Parkinson’s groups have been very important.

The Davis Phinney Foundation, https://davisphinneyfoundation.org/

The Michael J Fox Foundation, https://www.michaeljfox.org/