When Karen Straatmann moved to Washington, she said there was only one traffic light in town. Still, to her, it felt like a big city.
She grew up just outside of Chamois, a town on the Missouri River west of Washington in Osage County. The population of Chamois in 1970, the census year immediately before she moved to Washington with her husband, Dale, was 615 people. That year, Washington had a population of 8,499.
Today, the married couple are the parents of three children and grandparents to six. Dale and Karen marked 50 years of marriage May 6.
Growing up, her class at Assumption Grade School only had seven students. It closed the year she graduated.
The river and Chamois’ topography made life there a bit unpredictable.
“Lots of floods,” she explained. “We had a house on a hill that was often surrounded by water. We had a boat tied to the tree in the front yard.”
Her father, Marvin Starke, was a farmer and her mother, Lavern Starke, a homemaker.
“My dad always stressed to us he wanted us to go to college because he’d never had that opportunity,” she said. “So my brother, my sisters and I all did.”
Straatmann earned a bachelor’s degree in music education at the University of Central Missouri — then Central Missouri State University — in Warrensburg in 1972 and a master’s in music education at Maryville University in the 1980s.
But her father’s impact on her went beyond just the drive to attain an education.
“My dad was a farmer through the week,” Straatmann said. “But on Saturday night, he put on his red tuxedo to go play a dance job with his brothers, and they were really good too.”
She said her father and her brothers had a band, the Moonlight Serenaders, that would play swing music in the style of Glenn Miller, the American big band conductor who scored 16 No. 1 records and 69 top-10 hits.
That, she said, sparked her interest in music — an interest that would, in turn, spark several generations of students when she became a music teacher.
Music education
Straatmann’s grade school was too small to have a band, so when she attended Chamois High School it was the first time she learned to play an instrument. She played the saxophone — the same one her father used; he played it on weekends and she got it during the week. She, and some fellow students, only had three months to learn to play before joining the high school band.
“After three months the first piece that we played, when I was a freshman in high school, was the ‘Washington Post March,’” she said, referring to the composition by John Philip Sousa. “And they took off on that and we were like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ We were lost after the first measure.
“But it was also, I think, a message to us that if you wanted to play in this band, you have to learn how to do this and you have to work at it.”
And that message of work ethic and practice is something she took into her career as a teacher.
The bulk of Straatmann’s career in music education was in the Meramec Valley R-III School District where she spent about 29 years, eventually leading the Meramec Valley Middle School band.
Getting into that role was difficult, she said. “The superintendent at the time said he would never have a woman teaching band as long as he was the superintendent.”
So, she served as an elementary music teacher at the district’s Coleman Elementary School. However, she quickly got the job she wanted.
“He didn’t last very long,” she said. “And then I started teaching band.”
At first, she taught the elementary school students, then moved into the middle school. Her last seven years in the district were spent teaching band to sixth, seventh and eighth grade students.
“I had a lot of students then, and I was the only one there,” she said. “It was a big job.”
‘A big job’ that offered her the chance to share her love of music with others.
Stefanie Buscher, whom Straatmann taught seventh and eighth grade band at Meramec Valley Middle School, was so inspired that she went on to become a music teacher herself. Buscher, who teaches music education within the Rockwood School District, said she decided music education was what she wanted to do after only a couple months of learning from Straatmann.
“The exact connection that she had — not just with me, but with it seemed like every single student and there were so many students that she had — that was so pivotal in my life, helping me create a path and to see what I could maybe do with my life and career,” Buscher said.
“As a new student in a very large school, she was just absolutely wonderful — really helped me navigate being a new student and a new building and working to make relationships,” Buscher said.
She said Straatmann would teach 50 or more students at a time, which now, as a teacher herself, she realizes must have been difficult.
“That kind of caring compassion really stuck with me,” Buscher said. “You just knew she cared about you.”
After working at Meramec Valley R-III, Straatmann spent nine years teaching at St. Francis Borgia Grade School before retiring. At Borgia, alongside co-teacher Martha Gleich, she also taught students from nearby schools that didn’t have a band, including Immanuel Lutheran, Our Lady of Lourdes, St. John’s, St. Vincent’s and St. Gertrudes.
“I just really love teaching,” Straatmann said. “I loved it on the first day I taught and I loved it all the way through.”
She now directs the Our Lady of Lourdes bell choir.
However, her drive to educate didn’t stop with music. She also taught students about a different culture on the other side of the globe.
Guten tag!
When Straatmann first visited Marbach am Neckar in 1997, a town in Germany about 20 kilometers north of Stuttgart, she had never before traveled overseas. But it wasn’t the last time. Over the years she brought around 20 students and adults from the Washington area to the German town.
This was all through the Washington Sister City Program, a relationship between the two cities that was formally created in Marbach in 1990 and in Washington in 1991. The Sister City partnership led to a cultural exchange between the two cities with students, business leaders, elected officials, firefighters and others visiting each community.
“I think that this program is eye-opening for students,” Straatmann said. “And it gives them a new perspective on the world and what other people are like, so I think it’s so valuable for students to realize that we’re not the only people on this planet. There are a lot of people and we need to recognize our differences but rejoice in the ways that we are similar.”
Not only is visiting Germany a great learning experience, it’s also fun.
“It’s just so charming and the people are so friendly,” she said.
In addition to visiting, students from Washington also have the opportunity to travel to Marbach am Neckar and live with a family there for a couple weeks. And the German students have the same opportunity in Washington, which is how Straatmann got involved in the program.
Her first interaction with Marbach am Neckar came when she hosted a German girl and sent her daughter to temporarily live with the German girl’s family.
Straatmann became so involved in the program that she became the chairperson for Washington’s Sister City Commission, a role she has served in for the past eight years.
Former Washington Mayor Sandy Lucy appointed Straatmann.
“Karen just understood the importance of the program and the benefits that you could learn from traveling to another country and experiencing their culture and then having them come here and experience our culture,” Lucy said. “She has established some really great relationships with several of the individuals in Marbach that we visit with and correspond with them kind of on a regular basis.”
Lucy said Straatmann has been a perfect fit for the role.
“It was just right up her alley to be involved with this, because she was always trying to educate us about Germany — and the Germans about us,” Lucy said. “It’s pretty amazing.”
