For those of you not exhausted by the last few weeks’ expectoration of Michael Jackson trivia, here’s one more datum to file away:
Los Angeles County Superior Judge Mitchell Beckloff, the judge who is overseeing Jackson’s probate proceedings, is a local boy.
Beckloff attended Indian Creek Junior High School and Shawnee Mission South High School, graduating from the latter in 1979.
"We were friends in school," recalls classmate Anne Hellman, now a sales rep in Chicago for book publisher Macmillan.
Hellman said she reconnected with Beckloff recently on the Shawnee Mission South reunion Web site. She said Beckloff isn't planning to attend his 30-year reunion but has been in touch with some of his erstwhile classmates.
Hellman said she didn't recall Beckloff as having a judicial temperament back in the day, but then again, "in my mind he's just 19."
Another Shawnee Mission South classmate, former Kansas City lawyer Les Parrette Jr., now general counsel for Westco in Pittsburgh, said he didn't recall Beckloff, but he noted that there were 700 students in that year’s class.
Beckloff has been busy overseeing Jackson's immensely complicated estate. Last week, he ruled that Jackson's 2002 will was valid, and he designated Jackson’s longtime lawyer, John Branca, and music executive John McClain as executors of the estate. Jackson's mother, who has temporary custody of her son's children, had wanted to oversee the estate before the will was discovered.
Read the complete story at kansascity.com