
Students from that era will remember Ron Becker as the band and choir director. Jane Becker taught English and speech at CHS.

Both Ron and Jane grew up in Lincoln and met at the university. As teachers, they were popular with the students – but they were no pushovers. They expected students to apply themselves, which didn’t mean we couldn’t and didn’t have fun along the way! 1960 at Chadron was Jane's last teaching job, since the Beckers adopted a little boy, Randy, and they moved to Scottsluff.
It was nearly three decades later that I had the good fortune to cross paths again with the Beckers. It was the late 1980s in Sioux Falls, when Ron and I conspired to have members of the Sioux Empire Arts Council, which he headed, man the telephones during an on-air pledge drive for South Dakota Public Broadcasting. I was Deputy Director of the South Dakota Network in those days. With only a little coaxing on my part, Ron also agreed to serve on the Friends of South Dakota Public Broadcasting Board of Directors.
His association with SDPB transcended my eight years with the network. In addition to his many years of service in support of SDPB, Ron also served on the Board of Directors for America’s Public Television Stations (APTS), where he gained the admiration and respect of lay and professional public broadcasting people all across the country. He and I crossed paths at many public television meetings, as shown in the photo below, taken at a Capitol Hill Day in Washington, D.C., probably in about 1999. That's Ron on the right.

Now both retired, the Beckers live in Sioux Falls and continue to be active in the community, and they're able to spend considerable visiting their daughter Brenda and family in Sioux Falls and son Randy and family in Lincoln. The Beckers have four grandchildren.