Tuesday Profiles - Karen Bevins Winslow

15 August 1996 Profile

Karen Bevins Winslow

62 years old

This Profile is the first of a series of weekly profiles of major characters in the "Back to the Homeplace" novel that also appear in "The Homeplace Revisited," as of the beginning of the second novel, 15 Aug 1996.

Karen was born July 24, 1934, to Frank and Mildred (McDonald) Bevins, at The Homeplace farmhouse near Oak Springs, Missouri. 

She attended Oak Creek School #4, a one-room school near the Homeplace, from kindergarten through the 8th grade, when she went to town for high school.

She graduated from Oak Springs High School in the Class of 1952.

She was a classmate of Harry Flanders, now the local banker, all thirteen years. 

She graduated from Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield, in 1956 with a degree in Nursing.

Jason Winslow was born in Washington , Iowa, on July 1, 1934. He graduated from Washington High School in the Class of 1952. He went to Northeast Missouri State University in Kirksville, graduating in 1956 with a degree in Finance. He went directly to Southwest Missouri State University, in Springfield, and earned his MBA in 1959. While in Springfield, working for a CPA firm, he became interested in Financial Planning. During this time he also met Karen Bevins. He applied for a job with a Financial Planning firm in Tucson, Arizona, and was accepted.

Karen Bevins and  Jason Winslow were married on 27 November, 1960, at the First United Methodist Church in Oak Springs and moved to Tucson.

Children born to Karen and Jason in Tucson:

Matt, 1962, 34 in 1996

Lori, 1964, 32 in 1996

Erin, 1967, 29 in 1996

Kevin, 1970, 26, 1996

In 1987, Karen had been in her 16th year at Good Sam's hospital in Tucson when they moved to Oak Springs, Missouri, where she was born and lived until she graduated from high school.

Both Karen and Jason have been active in the Bevins Trust since it was created following the death of her mother in 1986.

Jason died in an automobile accident returning from Jefferson City, the state capital, on Bevins Trust business, on March 26, 1993.

Between about 1989 and 1992 Jason and Karen remodeled and added onto her parents farmhouse, always know as The Homeplace, into The Homeplace Country Inn with ten rooms to rent and a large Heritage Room meeting room. Karen has continued to operate and manage the Country Inn since Jason's death. It is nearby both the Bevins Stables and Horse Trails and the Oak Springs Mill.