Betty Lou (Fletcher) Beam, a homemaker who for decades was active in Nebraska civic and social organizations, died May 9, 2025, in Lincoln. She was 93.

For 74 years, Betty played the role of both wife and adviser to her husband, the Honorable C. Arlen Beam of the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Though neither was a native of Lincoln, they lived most of their lives in the Capital City, and, at the time of her death, Betty resided at The Landing senior living community.

Betty was born on April 15, 1932, on a farm in Mitchell County, Kan., the younger of the two children of Vera and Gerald Fletcher. The family moved to Nebraska when Betty and her late brother, Robert, were children.

She attended school in Lincoln, graduating from Lincoln High School in 1949. She enrolled at the University of Nebraska that autumn and joined the Kappa Delta sorority. She started as a home economics major but soon changed to commercial arts.

She met Arlen in the fall of 1950 at a dance. Each was with a different date, she recalled many years late, but “something clicked” between them that night, and shortly thereafter, they began dating. They married on July 22, 1951.

After the wedding, they headed to Estes Park, CO, where they had rented a cabin for a week for their honeymoon. They bought groceries at a small store, and she made their first meal as a married couple – pork chops, potatoes and gravy, beans and peaches.

“Arlen ate it all,” she would say later.  “He said it was good – and then promptly went outside and threw up. I haven’t liked to cook since.

Arlen, who was two years older, had finished his bachelor’s degree at the University of Nebraska College of Agriculture before their wedding, and he was set to go into the Army. In the autumn of 1951, after their wedding, Betty accompanied him to his first assignment at an Army training facility in Aberdeen, MD.

When he left Maryland in 1952 for the Korean War, Betty and their newborn son returned to Lincoln to live with her parents. Arlen rejoined them in Lincoln in 1953, after returning from South Korea.

Arlen started law school at the University of Nebraska that year but withdrew after a year because a health problem arose for Betty. He took a job with Steckley Hybrid Corn Co., which was headquartered in Lincoln.

During the mid-to-late 1950s, she and Arlen lived in several small towns in Illinois and Iowa while he traveled the Midwest as a representative of Steckley, but eventually they moved back to corporate headquarters in Lincoln. When Steckley was sold in 1963 to another agribusiness company, Arlen decided to complete his last two years of law school.

One of Betty’s most challenging assignments was to rear five boys, born across a span of nine years, though she also played other important roles in the family and in the communities in which they lived.

During the years that Arlen was finishing law school, she helped manage the consulting business that he had started to support the family. She also devoted considerable time to shuttling her sons to numerous sporting events, meetings for Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, church choir rehearsals, high school programs, and many other activities in which the boys participated.

Betty was active in the Nebraska Republican Party for many years (as was Arlen until he became a federal judge), and she belonged to a Lincoln chapter of P.E.O. International, a philanthropic organization that supports education for women through grants and scholarships.

For many years, she participated in alumna activities of Kappa Delta and Lincoln High School. From 1980 to 1982, she served on the Nebraska Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In the early 1980s, she and Arlen moved to Omaha, after he became a federal judge, but they eventually returned to Lincoln.

In later years, Betty became an avid birdwatcher and would enjoy the cardinals, hummingbirds, and turtle doves that frequented her homes. She also traveled, domestically and internationally. She and Arlen made trips to Mexico, Europe and South America, some with family and others with friends and business associates. For about a decade, while she and Arlen were in their late 70s and early 80s, they would spend several weeks each winter in the Palm Springs, CA, area.

Betty had enjoyed playing bridge since learning the game in college, and through the years belonged to several bridge groups.  She liked to do crossword puzzles and play table games of all kinds. She could be quite competitive, especially at dominos.

Even as she grew older and her eyesight began to fail, she still would play games with family and with other residents at The Landing and at The Grand Lodge, where she and Arlen had lived previously.  She excelled at Wii bowling.

As her children grew and went off to college, eventually establishing careers and families of their own, she could always be counted on for words of encouragement and unconditional love and support.  (Those are the moments that we, her sons and our families, will miss the most.)

Betty is survived by her husband; her sons and their spouses Randy Beam and Jerry Baldasty of Seattle, Jim Beam of Rockford, IL, Tom and Debbie Beam of Littleton, CO, Brad Beam of Lincoln, and Greg and Flora Beam of Everett, WA; four granddaughters; and two great-grandchildren.

The family plans a private service now and a public celebration of her life at a future date.