Valerie Beyrouty
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My name is Valerie Beyrouty and I first attended St Tom's in 1978 when my husband Craig was in Graduate School and I was a nursing student at St. Elizabeth School of Nursing. We left in 1984 for the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and returned seventeen years later in 2001 to West Lafayette, this time with three children.
I was raised in the military. My father was a career Naval Officer for 28 years. My three siblings and I moved from coast to coast and we lived in Hawaii for one of the duty stations. As a child and young adult, my religious affiliation was the First Christian Church, but being raised in the military I participated in the Methodist church, Baptist church and many times worshiped in the Protestant chapel, depending on the military base.
I met my husband-to-be in college in California and attended Catholic services with him at Mission San Luis Obispo. That was the beginning of my spiritual journey with Catholicism. I joined the Catholic Church in 1992, the same year my oldest child made her first communion and the journey continues.
I am an RN and worked in ICU/CCU for over 20 years both at St. Elizabeth Hospital in the early 1980's and in Arkansas until our move back to Indiana. Since coming back to West Lafayette, I have volunteered my time and held offices in several community organizations. My husband is Head and a faculty member in the Department of Agronomy at Purdue. Our oldest child Eryn graduated from Purdue in Elementary Education and is teaching in Northwest Indiana. Our son Matthew graduated with a degree in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences from Purdue in May and has just started a 27-month tour in El Salvador with the Peace Corps. Our youngest daughter Claire is a sophomore at Purdue in Speech Hearing and Linguistics at Purdue.
It is an honor to be selected to serve as a member of the St. Tom's parish Council. I take this responsibility very seriously and look forward to serving each of you and our spiritual community to the best of my ability. Thank you for your prayers and support as we continue to make St. Tom's an outstanding and inclusive parish.