Humboldt family carries on after tragedy
“In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.”
— Robert Frost
HUMBOLDT — Funny thing about life.
“It changes, whether you’re ready for it or not,” said Sarah Berkenmeier. “You’re just going along, then poof, it’s gone.”
Berkenmeier, widowed mother of twin 3-year-olds, Brooke and Bailee, knows all too well the sudden twists and turns of life.
One morning in December 2008 she was happily married with a family. By that night, she was a widow.
Her story is one of testament of a woman striving to remain a role model, authoritarian, and yes friend, to her girls.
“That’s one thing I’ve already begun to stress to them,” she said. “We’re a team. We need to stick together.”
SARAH grew up in Iola, the daughter of Dan and Janet Ware.
A 1993 Iola High School graduate, she bounced around from job to job after graduation, in search of a good fit. She attended college briefly before deciding that she couldn’t afford the time away from work.
Things changed for the better when Sarah took on at Cellular One (now U.S. Cellular) as a retail wireless consultant.
“I loved that job,” she said. “I guess I always had a thing for phones.”
Learning about the latest cell phone models and greeting customers were a natural fit, she said.
The job also happened to put her in touch with Mikel Berkenmeier.
MIKEL ENTERED the business one afternoon in April 2006 to discuss his cell phone bill.
“Had my co-worker done what she was supposed to do, I never would have met him,” Sarah recalled.
As Mikel waited nearby, Sarah’s co-worker — who shall remain nameless — instead was focused on a phone call.
Sarah quickly stepped in, addressed his issues, then offered her business card, standard operating procedure.
“Can I call you?” he asked.
“You could, but you’d have to talk to someone else,” Sarah responded. (She was going to be off duty the next day.)
“I didn’t ask if I could call someone else,” he replied. “I asked if I could call you.”
“I just said ‘sure,’” Sarah said. “We were pretty much inseparable after that.”
Both in their 30s, both agreed they were past the age of games.
“There weren’t any facades,” she recalled “It was like, ‘Look, this is who I am. Take it or leave it.’
“I think that’s why we hit it off so well.”
Sarah was taken by Mikel’s work ethic, his easy-going demeanor, and in particular, his cleanliness.
“He would fold the towel back after washing his hands,” she said. “I never had to clean up after him. He never left his clothes lying around.”
Mikel and Sarah were engaged by that December, “but we really hadn’t set a date,” she said. “We just figured it would happen when it happened.”
The marriage plans were soon put on the fast track. By the following April, she learned she was pregnant.
SARAH SAID she had an inkling she was carrying twins.
“My mom thought I was being ridiculous,” she said. “It was just that Mikel and I both wanted two kids, and we weren’t getting any younger.”
“Mike, of course, was thrilled, but he also let it be known that one of them better learn how to fish,” Sarah said with a laugh.
Seven weeks before their due date, complications arose.
Sarah was losing amniotic fluid and the doctors said, “Let’s get those babies out,” Sarah recalled.
Hours later, her daughters were born on Nov. 5, 2007, via Cesarean section at Overland Park Regional Medical Center. Bailee, officially, is one minute older. She weighed 4 pounds. Brooke was 3 pounds, 10 ounces.
The premature births meant an extensive stay in the hospital’s intensive care unit. Bailee was in ICU for 24 days; Brooke 18.
The ICU stint was primarily as a safeguard.
The final bill — $600,000, of which the family’s insurance plan covered 90 percent of the cost.
Sarah is only half-joking when she says she hopes to get their hospital bill paid off by the time they begin college.
WITH THEIR family complete, Sarah and Mikel were married the following summer.
Sarah agreed to stay home with the kids, while Mikel continued working at 2 R Tools in Humboldt.
Despite being a novice mother, Sarah quickly adapted.
“I didn’t know what I was doing, but I have always been pretty independent,” she said.
Sarah knew to pay close attention to how her friends interacted with their children, and to use her parents’ rules of parenting.
“I just kind of took bits and pieces that I liked from different people to create our rules.”
THE EVENTS OF Dec. 18, 2008, remain vivid, yet a blur.
It was a Friday. Sarah and Mikel had planned to go Christmas shopping the next day.
But Mikel also had a Christmas card for an uncle in Cherryvale he wanted to hand-deliver.
“I tried to talk him into waiting another day,” she said. “We were going out anyway, we could have taken it then. But he wanted to get it out of the way.”
The trip would be a quick one, he promised.
He delivered the card, as promised, and sent a quick text to his wife before departing for home.
“He just told me that he was a bit tired, so he was going to get something to eat before he headed home.”
The text came across at 9:45.
Such a trip usually takes about 40 minutes at the longest.
An hour passed.
“I started calling and texting him,” Sarah said. “No answer.”
As the second hour passed, she began calling relatives to see if he had made an unexpected stop elsewhere.
Nothing.
POLICE officers approached the Berkenmeier residence shortly after midnight. But they didn’t come to the door.
“They were doing things like shining flashlights through the window, checking out our garage,” she said.
Sarah began to worry. Had her husband been pulled over? Arrested?
The officers then left.
Mikel’s parents, who also live in Humboldt, soon pulled up.
“I knew it was something bad because his mother was out of their car before it had come to a stop,” Sarah said.
Mikel had been in a two-car collision on U.S. 169 just south of Chanute. He and the driver of the other vehicle were both killed.
Police reports said Mikel apparently fell asleep, his car slowly drifting across the highway’s center line into oncoming traffic.
“It happened just south of the 35th Street exit in Chanute,” Sarah said.
The highway separates just north of the exit, with a concrete divider.
“I don’t know what would have happened had he hit the divider instead,” Sarah said.
To this day, she has yet to drive by the spot of the accident.
“I had to go to Earlton once, but I took the back way,” she said.
THE ENSUING DAYS and weeks were filled with emotion and confusion.
“The entire Humboldt community’s response was wonderful,” she said. “They brought food, offered to help. I don’t know if the response would have been the same in other towns. I don’t think I’ll ever leave Humboldt,” she said. “I love this town.”
Rather than let her homelife unravel, Sarah rededicated herself to her children.
Her inspiring force was a peculiar choice. Amid her sorrow and confusion, Sarah grasped onto another emotion — anger.
“I was angry at Mikel for having to go to Cherryvale that night,” she said. “I was angry at my relatives. I was angry at life. I was just angry.”
She used that anger to inspire her to pick herself up by the proverbial boot straps.
“It was ‘fight or flight,’” she said. “I chose to fight.”
Mikel’s job was lucrative enough that Sarah and the girls could survive on his Social Security benefits.
“We got our car paid off, and we have enough to live on,” she said.
She plans to work again, but will wait until the twins start school.
They will begin preschool classes in the fall.
BAILEE AND Brooke were barely a year old when their father died.
“They don’t remember him, but we talk about him,” she said.
The girls have their distinct personalities, but for the most part get along.
Rules remain strict. Meal times, nap times and bed times rarely vary.
“They’ll fight over toys, but they stick up for each other,” Sarah said. “Brooke is a little sassier; Bailee has more of a ‘girly’ side.”
Sarah and her girls lead a quiet life, usually spent at home or with family and friends. Two cats, Pantera and Niobie, and a small dog, Sidda, keep the trio occupied as well.
“Life is never going to be normal again,” Sarah said. “Normal would have had Mikel in it. But we’ve gotten to a new normal, and the girls and I have adjusted. I tell them a lot that we’re a team. We’re going to have to stick together to make this work.”
