Katherine was a very kind and gentle woman. She spoke very softly and was extremely generous. She made her first communion April 22, 1886 in Cleveland, Ohio. She loved to travel out west and go to Indian reservations. She had a deep love for the western part of the U.S. She worked through the Catholic nuns to do what she could to help the impoverished Indians on their reservations. She would send money and help out in other small ways. She was also considered to be a very timid woman. In her later years she kept a billy club and a police whistle near her bed. She was afraid to fly and never flew in an airplane. When the family first bought a car she would get out of the car at the bottom of very steep hills and walk up the hill rather then go up in the car, because she was always afraid the breaks would not work.
When she was about fourteen she went to Europe with her mother and sisters and she was very upset at being out on the ocean for such a long period of time. While in Europe she went to Rome and got to meet the Pope and then the family went on to Germany to visit their German ''Beckmann'' relatives. Years later during World War II one of her cousins '' Johanna Frederick Beckmann'' was in the German army and had been taken prisoner by American forces at Anzio, Italy and sent to Fort Custer in Michigan. He wrote to her and asked her to come and visit him. She wrote to the U.S. army and asked to go visit him, but was turned down because only next of kin could visit a prisoner. After he was released and went back to Germany he continued to stay in touch with her.
When her youngest son Ed went off to World War II she gave him a gold coin and told him that if he should get taken prisoner to contact his German relatives and see if they could help him out in any way. She was a very devoted mother, especially to her youngest son Edward. She doted on him and he was always very close to her. She loved her grandkids and all small children in general. She kept a large jar full of pennies in her home. The jar had a small neck and she told the children who visited her to take as many pennies as they could grab. By the time they pulled their hand through the small neck they only had a few pennies. She once went to an airport to see her son Eddie fly off to California with his friend Paul Mantz to have dinner with Amelia Earhart. She turned to her son and said "Eddie, Mr. Mantz is so kind to fly you to California, so you should offer to pay for the gas," as her son stood staring at a very large truck, pumping gallons and gallons of fuel into the airplane. She was truly loved by all who knew her and they were quick to praise her kind acts and generosity.
Katherine adored her grandfather, Herman Beckman, and he likewise adored her. She thought the total world of him and was heartbroken when he slipped off the porch of her home where he had been living and died five days later as a result of the fall.
According to her daughter Mary Louise, "Very few people ever knew this about my mother, not even her sisters, but during prohibition my mother would make peach brandy in our basement as well as dandelion wine. Knowbody cared for the dandelion wine because it always looked so cloudy, but all her friends enjoyed the peach brandy. It was difficult to make and it had to be stirred every day for thirty days. The first batch that she ever made was all set to go, when she dropped the glass jar and thirty days of effort went down the drain. We joked about Mother's brandy making efforts for years afterwards."
One of the hardest things that Katherine said she had to do in life was to make up excuses to her dying mother as to why she could not see the grandson that she adored so much. They never told Mrs.Beckman that her grandson Henry Morse had died in a horse and carriage accident. In the last year of her life she would ask to see the child and Katherine said it broke her heart that she could not tell her mother what happened, but the truth everyone felt would have caused the grandmother a real set back. The one thing that she was most proud of was seeing her youngest son Eddie elected to United States Congress, but she was always a bit unnerved by the amount of young women who were attracted to her son. She found many of these women a bit brazen when they would come by her home and ask for her son's personal address in Washington. A proud moment for her was a day in 1948 when she stood at a window inside the Dayton Biltmore Hotel surrounded by a group of reporters as she watch her son going by on the street down below rideing with President Harry Truman and former Ohio Governor James M. Cox. She was also very proud of her son John and his great success in business. He had started his own company during the great depression against the advice of several bankers, and he had put in alot of hard work and over came the odds to built a very strong and successful company. She was also very proud of her two grandchildren John and Becky. She spent a lot of happy moments with them in her golden years. She died a very happy woman at peace with her self and the world around her.