by Linden Gross, Incubation Press: Empowering – and Publishing – the Writer in All of Us

“I once aspired to work in every bar in town. And I almost made it.,” asserts Karen Brannon, licensed insurance agent with Farmers, whose 12-year career pouring drinks included a six-month stint in a biker bar.

Say what? Karen!?! That’s right, ladies! And that’s just the tip of the surprises when it comes to her story.

Karen grew up in rural Nebraska, where she attended a one-room school house from kindergarten through eighth grade along with just six to seven other students. Her father was a farm hand for a corporate farm. Her mother worked part time cleaning houses.

Karen’s parents moved to a town of 300 so she could attend high school. Aspirations of the female students there were limited to three:

• Get engaged to a rich rancher before leaving high school;
• Work at the grocery store or café and wait for a rich rancher to marry you;
• Go to college.

Karen chose door #3 and found an in-state school as far away from home as possible. She had wanted to get away, but the University of Nebraska – Lincoln quickly proved overwhelming. “My dorm had more people than my home town,” she recalls. She studied criminal justice as much to help people as to find a program with small classes and individualized attention.

Criminal justice, however, wasn’t a good fit. Karen simply cared too much and got too involved. After just three years of working as a guard at a juvenile correction facility and as a truancy officer, Karen turned to a different kind of helping profession – bartending. In the late 70s, she decided she might as well have some fun, so she moved to Colorado and became a ski bum for a few years. Along the line, she also became a biker chick with her own 750 Yamaha. “I was a bit of a wild child,” she says, adding that these days she’s a social chameleon. “I can go from black leather to black lace in a heartbeat.”

Finally deciding to grow up in her mid-30’s, Karen started a house cleaning business . “That’s when I decided I liked selling. I liked going to houses and closing the deal.” So after five years, she sold her business and got her MBA at University of Northern Colorado. The resulting job with a software packaging company lasted 4 years until a ski accident, followed by a rollover car accident left her physically unable to even dress herself. That’s when she was diagnosed with figromyalgia. Next her husband decided she “wasn’t fun anymore,”and asked for a divorce and her boss fired her.

By age 40, Karen had recovered enough to look for another work opportunity. She found that at a software company in Marin County, California, where she would also meet her current husband, Terry. Determined to make a lot of money quickly so that she could fulfill her dreams of early retirement and buy a hotel on a tropical island. Then the bottom fell out of the high tech industry. Karen wound up running a car dealership’s customer satisfaction service, which she actually set up, for three years. By then the house she had purchased in Sonoma County had quadrupled in price. “Here’s the money for my dream hotel,” she figured.

When push came to shove, however, Karen balked at buying property in a foreign country. So she and Terry opted for the Florida coast, only to confront four hurricanes in their first ten months. In August 2004, the first hurricane, Charlie, blew the neighboring building’s roof right into the side of their hotel. The second hurricane was four times larger. “That’s when we decided that we were allowed to make mistakes, and to change our minds,” says Karen. They sold shortly thereafter, though it would take two years to collect. The insurance process took just as long. “That’s how I became passionate about insurance,” Karen says. “It had always been on my short list of things never to do for a living. But after that experience, I realized how much having the right insurance when calamity hits can impact your life.”

Karen and Terry, landed in Bend on September 1, 2005. Their home backs onto the forest in what Karen’s husband refers to as “the new La Pine.” They watch the sun set over the trees, and hop into their hot tub, dubbed “The Island,” when they need a tropical fix. “We love it,” she says. “We’re confident we’ll spend the rest of our lives here.”