Brookings, S.D.
Modern Woodmen representative since 1985 
It was about 2:30 a.m. when Karen got the call – the one every parent dreads. The caller shared no details. Just a calm, “Your daughter has been involved in a car accident. Could you please come to the hospital?”
As the single mom drove through the streets of St. Louis, she was ready to be angry at her daughter. “I thought at that point that she had been driving and had just not been paying attention,” she remembers. “Those were my first thoughts. OK, what has she done? Broken an arm? Broken a leg?”
But by that time Suzy had already passed away.
“It’s just like you see on TV,” says Karen. “They put me in the waiting room and about four or five doctors and nurses came in together.” There had been a bad accident. Suzy, the passenger, wasn’t wearing her seatbelt. “They told me Suzy had no pulse when they got her to the hospital.”
Saying goodbye When it came time to plan the funeral, Karen wasn’t sure what to do. Suzy lived in South Dakota most of her life but had also made many friends in Missouri over the past year that they had lived there. Ultimately, she decided to have services in both parts of the country.
Over 150 people came to the service in Missouri, and 350 people attended the service in South Dakota. Suzy made a big impact in a short time.
The cost of the two funeral services also made a big impact. Luckily, Karen knew she didn’t have to worry about how to pay those bills. Suzy had been covered by Modern Woodmen life insurance since she was 4. “It took a lot of stress off. I knew I could get things paid for without having to wait. Funeral costs, the headstone, the grave site – you just don’t realize the expense of flowers and all the other things. It’s kind of like sticker shock,” she says.
“As a single parent, money is tight. You don’t want to have to scrimp on what you do for your kids,” she says. According to Karen, that’s how having life insurance helps. “You want to be able to give the person who has passed away – you want to give them something.”
A shoulder to lean on Karen was also glad she could depend on her Modern Woodmen representative, Bob Weisbeck, Brookings. “He offered his condolences and was shocked just like everyone else. Then he just asked me what he could do,” she says.
What he did was help alleviate some of Karen’s stress. “He filled out all the paperwork and got everything ready,” she recalls. “I didn’t have to track down forms or figure out what to do. That was one less thing I had to worry about.”
Karen realizes life insurance for kids is something most parents don’t want to think about. “But it’s so important,” she says.
That call – the one Karen received at 2:30 in the morning – is every parent’s worst nightmare. Karen knows firsthand life insurance can’t make the nightmare go away. But it does make the nightmare easier to bear.