william beebe obituary

On August 6, 1902, Beebe was married to Mary Blair Rice, better known by her pen name Blair Niles. [198], With the loss of their station in Bermuda, Beebe and Elswyth gave up on their compromise of finding a research station where they could both be happy. [103] With his new position, Beebe no longer had the duty of caring for the zoo's animals, freeing him to devote himself fully to his writing and research. These expeditions formed the basis for a large quantity of writing for both popular and academic audiences, including an account of his pheasant expedition titled A Monograph of the Pheasants and published in four volumes from 1918 to 1922. [137] Beebe continued to perform helmet dives throughout his Galpagos expedition, documenting several previously unknown sea animals. This time he succeeded at capturing a hoatzin, the bird that he had narrowly missed during his earlier trip to Guiana, although he was unable to keep it alive for the zoo during the trip back to New York. [9] Although Beebe did not formally drop his first name "Charles" until 1915, before attending high school he was already commonly known as "William Beebe", as he would be known from this point onward. [71] By the time they left Sarawak, the conflict between Beebe and Horsfall had grown to such a degree that Beebe decided Horsfall was endangering the expedition and must be sent home. William Beebe was more famous in the United States than any other American naturalist before the days of television. [104] Beebe generally did not make the exact nature of his military service clear in his writings about it, although he expressed his general dismay at the realities of the war. He graduated from Fremont High School in 1947, after returning from an enlistment with the U.S. Navy. Beebe made extensive documentation of hoatzin behavior through field glasses, but their plans to capture one were foiled when they had to return home early due to Blair breaking her wrist. [180] Beebe in turn lacked patience for Barton's unpredictable moods and felt that Barton did not display the proper respect for the natural world. The reason they gave in their annual report was that the previous two seasons had produced so much material that they needed an additional year to analyze it, but in reality, this was more the result of insufficient funding as well as the unstable state of Venezuelan politics. [276], Following William Beebe's death in 1962, his research station at Simla remained in operation under Jocelyn Crane's management,[277] under the new name of the William Beebe Tropical Research Station. Beebe's study of these currents, and their effect on the climate of South America, is the earliest known study of the phenomenon known as El Nio. [269], In addition to his descriptions of new taxa, the crab Leptuca beebei (Crane, 1941), commonly known as Beebe's fiddler crab, was named in his honor. [267] While many of Beebe's observations from the Bathysphere have since been confirmed by advances in undersea photography,[226] it is unclear whether others fit the description of any known sea animal. [51] The following year Beebe received a promotion from the Zoological Society, placing him on equal footing with the research scientists at the Museum of Natural History. Born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in East Orange, New Jersey, Beebe left college before obtaining a degree to work at the then newly opened New York Zoological Park, where he was given the duty of caring for the zoo's birds. It is now once again actively involved in research and an important gathering place for scientists. [201] Beebe and his team used this station to study the ecology of the region and recorded how its inhabitants were affected by its cycle of wet and dry seasons. [94], Beebe undertook an expedition to Brazil in 1915, to capture more birds for the zoo. [31][87] Although newspapers at the time reported Blair's accusations uncritically, with headlines such as "Naturalist was cruel",[88] modern biographers consider it more likely that Blair resorted to hyperbole to make a divorce case. [158] Bermuda's governor Louis Bols introduced Beebe to Prince George, who was fascinated by Beebe's books, and Prince George persuaded Beebe to take him helmet diving. . "[258] Due to Beebe's renewed emphasis on field research at a time when laboratory studies were becoming the dominant trend in biology, more recent field researchers such as Jane Goodall and George Schaller are also sometimes considered his intellectual descendants. [238][239] According to his wishes, he was buried in Mucurapo Cemetery in Port of Spain. [282], Now under the management of the Asa Wright Nature Center, the William Beebe Tropical Research Station has gradually been renovated. He was born on Oct. 7, 1982, in Marietta, to Gary and. [220][223] In honor of his lifetime of work as a naturalist, Beebe was awarded the Theodore Roosevelt Distinguished Service Medal in 1953. [235], In an account of his final meeting with Beebe, Henry Fairfield Osborn, Jr. describes how during Beebe's last few years he gradually succumbed to illness, eventually becoming nearly immobile and incapable of speech. [252] However, Hornaday never publicly expressed his disagreements with Beebe and did not hesitate to defend Beebe's work when others criticized it.[253]. On one such occasion, when a scientist working under Beebe whispered to him that he knew it was not in fact Beebe's birthday, Beebe responded "A man should have a birthday when he needs one". We are sad to announce that on February 19, 2019, at the age of 57, William Beebe (Brookwood, Alabama) passed away. To some men, the jungle is a tangled place of heat and danger. Barton's design called for a spherical vessel, which was the strongest possible shape for resisting high pressure. [2] Several factors contributed to this decision, including both excitement at being part of the zoo, and the sense that his studies were putting too much of a strain on his family's finances. William Beebe's passing on Wednesday, November 23, 2022 has been publicly announced by Strano and Feeley Family Funeral Home in Newark, DE. [21], Osborn appointed Beebe to the position of assistant curator of ornithology. [281] In 1974, Beebe's property was donated to the newly established Asa Wright Nature Center. Remembering the early studies of his own childhood, in which he had brought specimens to the American Museum of Natural History, he was happily working with them. [203] Although Beebe's research at Caripito was productive, he felt that the extremity of its wet-dry cycle made it impractical as a research station,[204] and the expanding oil operations in the region were in danger of destroying the local environment. He was predeceased by : his parents, Charles Beebe and Ellen Beebe. Published on March 29, 2022 . For his contributions to science, he was elected a fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. [92] Due to the elaborate nature of the book's color artwork, no American publisher was considered capable of reproducing it. In recognition of the research conducted on his expeditions, he was granted honorary doctorates from Tufts and Colgate University. Although some sources have described him as an only child, [3] he had a younger brother named John who died in infancy. The Galpagos animals generally showed no fear of humans, causing the team to have a high degree of success at capturing live specimens for the zoo. As a compromise, Beebe decided to continue his marine research in Bermuda, where she and Beebe had spent their honeymoon. But, to the man who can see, its vines and plants form a beautiful and carefully ordered tapestry. Barton was convinced that Beebe's design for a diving vessel would never be capable of withstanding the extreme pressure of the deep ocean,[165] and with the help of a friend who arranged a meeting with Beebe, proposed an alternative design to him. Arrangements entrusted to Regina Funeral Home (306) 789-8850. [71] The next ship took them to Singapore, where Beebe established a base of operations for the next stage of his expedition. [10][11] During his high school years Beebe developed an interest in collecting animals, particularly after receiving his first gun at the age of sixteen, and trained himself in taxidermy to preserve them. [100], Beebe was eager to serve in World War I, but at 40 he was considered too old for regular service. While the text was written by Beebe, the illustrations were provided by several artists: Robert Bruce Horsfall, who had accompanied Beebe on the expedition, painted the environmental scenes for the illustrations' backgrounds, while the pheasants themselves were painted by other artists including George Edward Lodge, Charles R. Knight, and Louis Agassiz Fuertes. Beebe summarized his discoveries at Kalacoon in his 1917 book Tropical Wild Life in British Guiana, which inspired many other researchers to plan trips to Kalacoon or to establish their own field research stations of the type that Beebe had pioneered. [195] During this time Beebe was also forming a close friendship with Winnie-the-Pooh's creator A. Elswyth, who was most content in temperate environments, began searching for a home in New England where she could continue her writing. [213] He was by this point the only remaining member of the zoo's original staff,[214] and had produced more scholarly papers and publicity than any other employee. [264] However, Beebe's prolific writing for a popular audience had a downside, in that other scientists of his time were reluctant to hold him in high accord because they regarded him as a popularizer. The same year, he was also elected a fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences. [236] However, Beebe's personal physician A. E. Hill provides a differing account, stating that Beebe remained lucid and able to move about without assistance almost until his last day, apart from the periods of time during which his "mango mouth" temporarily slurred his speech. Realizing that the area's politics might soon put an end to their research there, in spring of 1948 Jocelyn made a side trip to Trinidad and Tobago in hope of finding a site for a research station where the politics would be more secure. In addition to the open nature of their marriage, Elswyth described in a 1940s interview with Today's Woman magazine that she enjoyed the knowledge that Beebe was attractive to women. [] One of the few things in the world of which I am really proud is that I know Will Beebe. [263], A lingering controversy exists in ichthyology over the validity of the four species Beebe described based on visual descriptions only, which he had observed during his Bathysphere dives. [76] He attributed his recovery to the pile of penny dreadful novels he discovered in his bungalow at Pungatong, which he then read constantly for the next few days. [205], Rancho Grande was located at a mountain pass in a branch of the Andes known as the Venezuelan Coastal Range, which was an important migration route for butterflies, and the station proved very lucrative in the study of insects. Wedge these into crevices, and in a few days, you will have a sunken garden in a new and miraculous sense. Connie McAfee Obituary. [134], The Arcturus did not encounter the thick mats of sargassum in the Sargasso Sea that Beebe was hoping to study, but Beebe and his crew experienced great success dredging creatures from the sea off the coast of Saint Martin and Saba. Find an obituary, get service details, leave condolence messages or send flowers or gifts in memory of a loved one. [3][22] As assistant curator, one of his principal jobs was to breed and rear the zoo's birds in order to sustain their population. [114], In 1919, Osborn helped secure Beebe a new research station in Guiana to replace Kalacoon: Beebe was offered Kartabo Point, an outpost of a New York-based mining corporation. [224], In 1952, on his seventy-fifth birthday, Beebe retired from his position as the director of the NYZS's Department of Zoological Society and became Director Emeritus, while Jocelyn Crane was promoted to Assistant Director. Marguerite. [169] The Bathysphere was lowered into the ocean using a steel cable, and a second cable carried a phone line which the Bathysphere's occupants used to communicate with the surface, as well as an electrical cable for a searchlight to illuminate animals outside the Bathysphere. William D Beebe. William Beebe at age 18, at his home in East Orange Charles William Beebe was born in Brooklyn, New York, son of the newspaper executive Charles Beebe. He was born in Chester, PA and attended Penncrest High School. [172] Beebe and Barton made a total of 35 dives in the Bathysphere,[173] setting several consecutive world records for the deepest dive ever performed by a human. "[196], Although Beebe continued to use Nonsuch Island as his base of operations throughout the 1930s, with the onset of World War II in 1939 it was announced that the ferry linking Bermuda to New York would soon be making its final run, requiring Beebe and his team to hastily abandon their station there. He also spent time in trenches and accompanied a Canadian Indian platoon on a night raid. L.A. Times photographer Bill Beebe, who waded into ocean to snap iconic JFK image, dies at 94 President Kennedy is surrounded by admirers on a Santa Monica beach in the iconic image taken by Los. The establishment of the Kalacoon research station enabled Beebe to research the ecology of the surrounding jungle in far more detail than had been possible during his earlier expeditions. [75] In Burma Beebe succumbed temporarily to a bout of depression, and it was several days before he was able to resume working or continue the expedition. Family and friends can send flowers and/or light a candle as a loving gesture for their loved one. [20] In 1899, although he had completed all of the required courses for a degree in science from Columbia except for mathematics, he decided to forgo his studies in favor of an invitation from Osborn to work at the New York Zoological Park which was about to open. Governor Bols and Prince George subsequently offered Beebe Nonsuch Island, a 25-acre (0.10km2) island off the east coast of Bermuda, for use as a research station. Elswyth explained in a magazine interview that she was uncomfortable on Beebe's expeditions, so the two of them had agreed that they would keep their careers separate from their private lives. [188] With the help of Beebe's friend the physician Henry Lloyd, Beebe conducted an expedition in the West Indies examining the stomach contents of tuna, which uncovered previously unknown larval forms of several species of fish. [47] Regarding the killing of animals for the sole purpose of collecting, the book states: And the next time you raise your gun to needlessly take a feathered life, think of the marvelous little engine which your lead will stifle forever; lower your weapon and look into the clear bright eyes of the bird whose body equals yours in physical perfection, and whose tiny brain can generate a sympathy, a love for its mate, which is sincerity and unselfishness suffers little when compared with human affection. [123] Beebe also discovered a previously unknown bay on Genovesa Island (also known as Tower Island) in the Galpagos, which he named Darwin Bay, and documented the diversity of animal life that inhabited it. [265] The naming of a new species ordinarily requires obtaining and analyzing a type specimen, something which was obviously impossible from inside the Bathysphere. [138] In addition to his helmet dives, Beebe applied the same method of research that he had pioneered in the tropics to a small area of ocean, sailing in circles around it for ten days to document all actions and interactions of marine life within that area. [268] One possibility is that although these animals indeed exist, so much remains to be discovered about life in the deep ocean that these animals have yet to be seen by anyone other than him. [194] Like Hollister before her, Crane would eventually become Beebe's lover during the long expeditions that Beebe made without Elswyth's companionship. The palace's construction had been left unfinished after Gmez's death, and since then the building's vast corridors and ballrooms had become the home of jaguars, tapirs and sloths. [61], In December 1909, businessman and philanthropist Anthony R. Kuser proposed to the zoo that Beebe be allowed to go on a voyage around the world to document the world's pheasants, which would be financed by Kuser. October 18, 1943 - September 4, 2020. He was born January 23, 1941 in Toledo Ohio to Ronald Sinclair and Mary Jane (Buermile) Beebe. [72], The expedition's next destination was Sarawak, on the island of Borneo. [31] A week after her divorce from Beebe, Blair was remarried to their next-door neighbor Robin Niles, suggesting that the true reason for the divorce may have been cuckoldry. Very little of their early correspondence survives, but Elswyth had idolized Beebe for years, and her first novel Riders of the Wind was devoted to him. [283] It is also a popular destination for birdwatchers, who can observe the same populations of hummingbirds, tanagers and oilbirds that William Beebe studied decades earlier.[279]. [70] Horsfall rejoined them in Calcutta, from which they sailed to Indonesia. [108] Beebe's duties as curator were passed to Lee Crandall, the former Assistant Curator who had worked under Beebe,[109] although Crandall continued to rely on Beebe for help treating illness in birds, and caring for the exotic birds brought back from Beebe's expeditions. [122] During this expedition he documented the unique ways that animals that inhabit the Galpagos have evolved in response to the absence of predators. [37] Since Mexico was still largely unstable at this point, he and Blair traveled on horseback and lived mostly in tents, and both carried revolvers for self-protection. [179] Barton was often resentful of this, believing Beebe to be deliberately hogging the fame. [220], Research at Simla formally began in 1950. Services for William "Bill" D. Beebe, age 76, of Enid, died, Sept. 4, 2020, are pending with Ladusau-Evans Funeral Home. To prevent this possibility, he left all of his papers and journals to Jocelyn. [231] Beebe devised an unusual method for determining how he would react to his visitors at Simla. Charles William Beebe was born in Brooklyn, New York, son of the newspaper executive Charles Beebe. [124] During the return to New York from this expedition, Beebe continued to dredge animals from the sea, using a pair of new devices he had devised to assist himself with this: a "pulpit", an iron cage affixed to the bow of the ship that enabled its occupant to examine the surface of the sea more closely; and a "boom walk", a 30-foot (9.1m) boom jutting from the side of the ship from which he suspended himself. As he observed the crater, Beebe realized that the air surrounding it was filled with noxious gases, and narrowly avoided suffocation before staggering away from it. His training work was halted when, veering to avoid a photographer who had run in front of his airplane as he landed, he crashed on landing and severely injured his right wrist. It is with deep sorrow that we announce the death of Connie McAfee of Beebe, Arkansas, born in Brinkley, Arkansas, who passed away on February 22, 2023, at the age of 61, leaving to mourn family and friends. His letter of congratulation to Beebe was the last letter that Roosevelt wrote before his death. Beebe and his team began work there in 1945, staying as guests of the Venezuelan government. Appalled by the destruction, Beebe finally rented his station at Nonsuch Island to a military contractor and returned to New York. [206] Creole Petroleum, a Venezuelan spin-off of Standard, agreed to cover the cost of the station and finished a small portion of the vast structure for Beebe and his team to use. [169] The record set by the deepest of these, to a depth of 3,028 feet (923m) on August 15, 1934, lasted until it was broken by Barton in 1949. A large number of military ships made docking difficult, most of the island's reefs were being destroyed to construct an airfield, and the combination of construction activity and pollution observed the sea life impossible. Published on September 4, 2020. Beebe had frequently worried that Elswyth would write a biography of him after his death. [90], Blair's departure came as a shock to Beebe, and he was severely depressed for more than a year afterward. During these trips, Beebe also developed an interest in dredging, the practice of using nets to haul up animals that lived deep underwater and attempting to study them before they died or disintegrated. The funeral for David William David Beebe, III, 46, will be at 10:00 a.m. Saturday April 2, 2022, at Hennessey Public Schools Auditorium. [202] One important study which resulted from this region was the first documentation of rhinoceros beetles using their horns in competition between males, proving that their horns were an adaptation for sexual selection rather than for defense against predators. [121], Beebe's first expedition to the Galpagos lasted twenty days, broken into two ten-day periods, between which the Noma was forced to return to Panama for fresh water and coal. Searching for a way to satisfy his expedition's donors, Beebe hit upon the idea of documenting the marine life of the Hudson Gorge just beyond the shore of New York City. [191] Beebe described his two expeditions onboard the Zaca in his books Zaca Venture and The Book of Bays, in which he emphasized his concern for threatened habitats and his dismay at human destruction. [14] While attending university, Beebe frequently split his time between the university and the American Museum of Natural history, many of whose researchers were also professors at Columbia. [204], In the spring of 1944, Jocelyn Crane returned to Venezuela to search for a location for a new field station to replace the one at Caripito. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. I saw them because I was looking up. [62] Hornaday strongly objected to this proposal, describing Kuser as an "evil genius" who was attempting to steal Beebe away from his duties at the zoo. [140] Observing the eruption from his ship for another two days, as well as again at a later point in the expedition, Beebe recorded how numerous birds and marine animals were killed after either failing to escape the lava or drawing too close to it in an attempt to scavenge other animals that had died. [12] Beebe's first article was published while he was still in high school, a description of a bird called a brown creeper, which appeared in the January 1895 issue of the magazine Harper's Young People. [67] From Ceylon they traveled to Calcutta, with the goal of capturing the species of pheasants which live only in the Himalayas. [4][5] Early in his life, his family moved to East Orange, New Jersey, where he began to acquire both his fascination with the natural world and his tendency to record everything he saw. [153][154] Beebe and Elswyth were married on September 22, 1927, when Beebe was 50. His observations documented several behaviors which were new to science, including the first documented example of play in birds. Leave a sympathy message to the family on the memorial page of William Beebe to pay them a last tribute. [1][225] Beebe's last major expedition occurred in 1955, retracing the route he had taken during his pheasant expedition 45 years earlier, with the intention of discovering how the populations he had previously studied were faring in response to human encroachment. [16], While attending Columbia, Beebe persuaded his professors to sponsor him and several fellow students taking research trips to Nova Scotia, where he continued his hobby of collecting, as well as attempting to photograph difficult-to-observe scenes of birds and other animals. [91], By the end of 1914, Beebe's pheasant monograph was essentially complete in the manuscript. William worked many years in the grocery business in sales and held various managerial . [102][103] Combined with his earlier loss of Blair, the effect of losing Kalacoon plunged Beebe into depression. [144][145] During the course of writing this book, Beebe was reminded of many experiences during the pheasant expedition which he had not included in his original monograph, and wrote an additional book titled Pheasant Jungles about his adventures during this expedition. William R Beebe age 79 of Delta, Ohio, passed away at Swanton Health care and retirement Center Sunday, October 25, 2020. Beebe returned to Rancho Grande in 1948, where he completed several technical papers about the migration patterns of birds and insects, as well as a comprehensive study of the area's ecology which he coauthored with Jocelyn Crane. [44] This book was a reworking of a manuscript that Beebe had submitted to Henry Holt in 1902, but which Holt had asked him to expand into a major work on birds. This was the first time a biologist observed deep-sea animals in their native environment and set several successive records for the deepest dive ever performed by a human, the deepest of which stood until it was broken by Barton 15 years later. [57], In February 1909, Beebe and Blair traveled to British Guiana, in the hope that with Roosevelt's support, it might be possible to establish a permanent field research station there. When he felt that the pressure of working under him had become too great, he would announce that his birthday was approaching, and his staff would have several days free from work to celebrate it. Charles William Beebe (/bibi/ BEE-bee; July 29, 1877 June 4, 1962)[2] was an American naturalist, ornithologist, marine biologist, entomologist, explorer, and author. All about us, nature puts on the most thrilling adventure stories ever created, but we have to use our eyes. [150] She disliked the heat of the tropics and was unwilling to go with Beebe to Kartabo. [101] During a second trip to Kalacoon while his wrist healed, Beebe was further devastated to discover that due to wartime demand for rubber, the entire jungle surrounding the house had been clear-cut to make room for rubber trees. [141], During the return from the Galpagos through the Sargasso Sea, Beebe once again failed to find the thick mats of Sargassum whose study had been one of the primary goals of the expedition. [34] In July 1903, at the request of a lawyer named Louis Whealton whom the zoo's director William Temple Hornaday regarded as a potential donor to the zoo, Beebe and Blair went on another expedition to Virginia's Barrier Islands. [99] During his first season at Kalacoon in 1916, Beebe brought back 300 living specimens for the zoo.

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