    In 1968 Bruce and I who had been close friends all during junior high and high school (Olympus, Holladay UT, Class of 65) found ourselves for very different reasons in what was then West Germany and decided to meet.  Bruce was serving an LDS mission and I was going to school, desperately trying to read and speak as much German language as I could.   It was  the year of the King and Robert Kennedy assassinations and the year Lyndon Johnson chose  not to seek reelection and so caused all that subsequent trouble in Chicago during the Democratic convention.   
    We chose to visit Neu Schwanstein,  mad Ludwig of Bavaria's 19th century Gothic revival fantasy castle--the arch prototype of the Disney "Fantasy Land" castle that has now at last become the corporate logo for a blue chip company.  Bruce and I talked incessantly for the several hours of the tour and afterward and our level of abstraction, and fascination with our own capacity to spin out webs of empty thinking reminded us again of the long conversation that had been our great pleasure in secondary school.   I can't remember now a thing we said at the time, but it seemed to us both every bit as aspirational--and perhaps just as "romantic" as Ludwig's ridiculous castle.  Since 2015 we spoke only rarely on the telephone.  It must be almost 60 years now since I first met him, but his phone number is still on my cell.   However, I will miss even the occasional call .   All the best to his wife and children.   Stan Hansen

Wasatch Lawn Memorial Park and Mortuary

Douglas Beckstead

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Douglas Beckstead

February 7, 1947 – March 4, 2020

Wasatch Lawn Memorial Park and Mortuary

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