St. Peters Woman: Traveler, Musician and Volunteer

St. Peters resident Charlotte Myklebust has travelled the world, is a classically trained musician and a volunteer in the community.

Myklebust plays the piano and she said she went to college with the intent to play music professionally, but life had other plans for her.

“I was classically trained and had received a full scholarship to play music in college, but then World War II happened and there was no need for classical musicians,” said Myklebust.

Instead, the Versailles, MO, native said she studied to become an elementary school teacher at Central Missouri Teachers College, in Warrensburg, MO (now the University of Central Missouri). After graduating, she taught primary school for one year, and stopped teaching after her first marriage and the birth of her daughter.

While music is her first love, Myklebust has a background in education and social work. She earned a master’s degree in social work and became the first urban social worker in Colorado.   

It was during her time in Colorado that Myklebust met and fell in love with her second husband.

Harold, or Mike as she called him, was a Shriner clown.  The two met while she was living in Denver in a rather unorthodox way. Myklebust said her husband was in the middle of a parade and was dressed in full Shriner’s clown garb when he spotted her.

 “I was stopped at a traffic light and he just jumped into my convertible,” Myklebust said of her late husband.

The two were married just six weeks later.

In addition to being involved with the Shiners, her husband worked for the government and was the chief finance officer in Cheyenne, WY, when the two met. Because of her husband’s line of work, the couple moved to many different cities throughout the U.S. and she has lived in Washington, D.C., Kansas City, KS, California and Connecticut.

Not only has she lived in numerous states, Myklebust has also travelled to Europe, Egypt, has went through the Panama Canal, visited Canada and has been to all 50 states.

She grew up taking yearly vacations with her family and said she got her love of travel from her father.

 “My dad was a travelling salesman and every year he loaded up the car and took the family on a trip to somewhere we had never been before,” she said.

Among her other experiences, Myklebust worked as a volunteer at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. for three years, she is a lifetime Girl Scout, is active in her college sorority Tri Sigma, belongs to the Embroidery Guild of America and volunteers at the St. Peters Cultural Arts Centre.