william beebe obituary

This promotion explicitly granted him two months off each year, for further research expeditions. [38] Although the purpose of the expedition was to discover, identify and collect Mexico's birds,[39] it has also been described as yet another honeymoon between him and Blair. After failing to find such evidence, Heilmann ultimately rejected Beebe's Tetrapteryx hypothesis, and this remained the consensus among ornithologists for the next several decades. [174], In 1931, Beebe and Barton's Bathysphere dives were interrupted for a year due to technical problems and uncooperative weather. [251] One particular point of disagreement was Beebe's forgetfulness about returning books which he had borrowed from the Zoological Society's Library, which would occasionally go missing for years as a result. "William Beebe," in Tom Taylor and Michael Taylor, Hazard identification and risk assessment, This page was last edited on 16 January 2023, at 13:35. [270], Along with his analysis of pheasant phylogeny and his studies of life in the Galpagos Islands, Beebe regarded one of his most important contributions to the field of evolutionary biology to be his hypothesis that the ancestors of birds passed through what he referred to as a Tetrapteryx stage, with wings on both their front and hind limbs. The same year, he was also elected a fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences. [202] For these reasons, Beebe did not return to Caripito after his first season there. [205] Unlike Beebe's other tropical research stations, which had been located in lowland regions, Rancho Grande was located on a mountainside in what Beebe described as "the ultimate cloud jungle". Beebe had far more field experience than either of the two others accompanying him on the expedition, G. Inness Hartley and Herbert Atkins, making this his introduction to the role of a mentor. [85] Obtaining a divorce in Reno required a person to demonstrate that their spouse had committed either adultery or extreme cruelty; Blair's complaint accused Beebe of the latter,[86] claiming that during the pheasant expedition he had threatened to commit suicide by "throwing himself in the river, shooting himself through the roof of the mouth with a revolver, and by cutting his throat with a razor. He was 69 years old and. [113] The completed work, titled A Monograph of the Pheasants, has been considered by some reviewers to be possibly the greatest ornithological monograph of the twentieth century. Beebe was a well-known figure in the Roaring Twenties of New York City and was friends with numerous other well-known figures of the period, including Fannie Hurst and the cartoonist Rube Goldberg. Passed away at the Charles Lemoyne Hospital at the age of 62 after a brief but courageously fought battle. William R Beebe age 79 of Delta, Ohio, passed away at Swanton Health care and retirement Center Sunday, October 25, 2020. [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. [151] He later went so far as to suggest that beachfront homes would someday contain their own underwater gardens, to be experienced with the help of diving helmets: If you wish to make a garden, choose some beautiful slope or reef grotto and with a hatchet chop and pry off coral boulders with waving purple sea-plumes and golden sea-fans and great particolored anemones. [210] Finally, when the 1948 Venezuelan coup d'tat installed Marcos Prez Jimnez as Venezuela's dictator, Beebe decided that he could no longer continue to work in Venezuela. 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. [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. 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. [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. Following his Bathysphere dives, Beebe returned to the tropics and began to focus his study on the behavior of insects. [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. One night three giant fruit bats flew over the face of the moon. "[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 was born January 23, 1941 in Toledo Ohio to Ronald Sinclair and Mary Jane (Buermile) Beebe. [245] Although he was not physically handsome in the traditional sense, he tended to dominate every social and professional situation due to his enthusiasm, intelligence, and charisma. Beebe and Barton made a deal: Barton would pay for the sphere and all of the other equipment to go with it. 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. Roosevelt in turn admired Beebe's writing and his respect for the natural world. [31][40] Beebe's first book, titled Two Bird Lovers in Mexico, was an account of this expedition. [244] As a scientific writer who participated in both the popular and academic worlds, he occupied a similar role to the role later occupied by Stephen Jay Gould. All about us, nature puts on the most thrilling adventure stories ever created, but we have to use our eyes. [68] By this point Beebe was beginning to conflict with Horsfall, who was unaccustomed to such expeditions. She was 82. 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. Although this evolutionary model is now taken for granted, in William Beebe's time it was a novel idea. In recognition of the research conducted on his expeditions, he was granted honorary doctorates from Tufts and Colgate University. [6][7] The American Museum of Natural History, which opened the year that Beebe was born, fostered Beebe's love of nature and was an early influence on him. [114][263] This was particularly significant in the area of conservation, of which he was one of the most important early advocates. View Obituary & Service Information [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. Burial will follow at Cimarron Valley Cemetery under direction of Cordry-Gritz Funeral Home. [159], With the financial help of his sponsors, Beebe planned to use his new research station on Nonsuch Island to conduct a thorough study of an 8-mile (13km) square area of ocean, documenting every living thing they could find from the surface to a depth of 2 miles (3.2km). In 1957, at the age of eighty, he was still capable of climbing slippery tree trunks to study bird nests. During this expedition, rather than focusing on either sea animals as he had at Nonsuch Island or on birds as he had earlier in his life, he attempted to document all aspects of the ecosystem. [33], The following February, Beebe, and Blair went on an expedition to the Florida Keys, because Beebe was suffering from a throat infection and the zoo believed that the warm climate would be beneficial to his health. The last chapter was written by Blair and was an explanation of how to plan and execute a vacation in the wilderness. Visitors who recognized these characters as Milne's creations were greeted by Beebe with enthusiasm, while those who did not recognize them were just endured by Beebe until they left. [162] The New York Times carried articles describing Beebe's plans, which called for a diving bell with the shape of a cylinder. [31][32] Beebe and Blair regarded their honeymoon, another trip to Nova Scotia, as a further opportunity for collecting. [52] The first expedition conducted under his new privileges, beginning in February 1908, took him to Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela to research birds and insects. This did not go unnoticed by Beebe's mentor Osborn, who expressed concern about it in a letter to Madison Grant, writing "I find that he is worried and far from well. Arrangements entrusted to Regina Funeral Home (306) 789-8850. 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. According to the funeral home, the following services. [200], With the financial assistance of Standard Oil and the Guggenheim Foundation, Beebe established his next research station in Caripito, a small city in Venezuela around 100 miles (160km) west of Trinidad and Tobago. 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. [236], William Beebe died of pneumonia at Simla on June 4, 1962. [187], Beebe continued to conduct marine research after 1934, but he felt that he had seen what he wanted to see using the Bathysphere and that further drives were too expensive for whatever knowledge he gained from them to be worth the cost. [83] based on his observations he also proposed a new evolutionary model of pheasant ancestry, involving a period of rapid diversification followed by more typical and gradual changes. [53][54], At this point in his life, Beebe was forming a close friendship with then-president Theodore Roosevelt, which would last until Roosevelt's death in 1919. [79] When the plague and riots had subsided, Beebe returned to China to document the local pheasant species, then made a second visit to Japan to study pheasants kept in the Imperial Preserves there. [82] Beebe's observations of sexual dimorphism in pheasants during this expedition led him to become the first biologist to correctly understand the mechanism by which this aspect of sexual selection operates. [272] Beebe, however, continued to advance his Tetrapteryx hypothesis as late as the 1940s. [222] Insects were the focus of the scientific papers he produced during this period, marking a transition from his past areas of study into the field of entomology. He was born in Westchester, Pennsylvania and moved to central Florida in the early. [215][249] Among the most significant of Beebe's influences on other researchers was Rachel Carson, who regarded Beebe as both a friend and an inspiration. 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. [189] Shortly after returning, Beebe set out on a longer expedition to the waters around Baja California, financed by the Californian businessman Templeton Crocker on board his yacht the Zaca. At his request, he and his chair were transported into the nearby jungle, and as he sat motionless the wild animals around him soon began to go about their business without noticing his presence. [234] Beebe also began to be afflicted with a throat ailment which may have been Sjgren's syndrome, although lacking a complete understanding of what caused it, Beebe and his doctors referred to it as "mango mouth". A. Milne, who wrote of Half Mile Down "I don't know which I envy you most: all those moral and physical qualities which you have and I lack, or all that wonder of a new world. William Thomas Beebe. Marguerite Vermilye Beebe died on Thursday, April 2, 2020, at Talbot Hospice House in Easton, MD. In return, Beebe would pay for other expenses such as chartering a ship to raise and lower the sphere, and as the owner of the sphere, Barton would accompany Beebe on his expeditions in it. [148] Within a hundred days, Beebe and his team had created a catalog of species inhabiting the area nearly as long as what had been assembled on the neighboring island of Puerto Rico in the past four hundred years. [133] The Arcturus was outfitted with Beebe's pulpit and boom walk from the Noma, as well as cages and tanks for live animals, chemicals and vials to preserve dead ones, and a darkroom for developing film and studying the bioluminescent animals they hoped to encounter. [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. Born August 7, 1944 in Manito to Rollin A. and Rosie B. [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. [136], Anchoring near Darwin Bay, Beebe made his first attempt at studying sea animals in their native environment by descending into the ocean in a diving helmet. [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. We are sad to announce that on November 26, 2021, at the age of 79, John William Coulter of Beebe, Arkansas passed away. Charles William Beebe (/bibi/ BEE-bee; July 29, 1877 June 4, 1962)[2] was an American naturalist, ornithologist, marine biologist, entomologist, explorer, and author. [120] Passing through the Sargasso Sea on the way to the Galpagos, Beebe was fascinated by the diversity of life that could be found in the sargassum weed floating on the surface and spent several days scooping the weed from the water to examine the creatures that lived in it. [17] Beebe never applied to receive a degree from Columbia,[18] although years later he was granted honorary doctorates from both Tufts and Colgate University. [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. In October 1917, Beebe had his opportunity to serve in the war. [195] During this time Beebe was also forming a close friendship with Winnie-the-Pooh's creator A. [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. [8], In September 1891, Beebe began attending East Orange High School. His theory that organisms must be understood in the context of the ecosystems they inhabit was completely new for its time and has been highly influential. 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. William 'Bill' Harley Beebe. This study yielded a collection of 3,776 fish of 136 species, many of them also new to science. [99] During his first season at Kalacoon in 1916, Beebe brought back 300 living specimens for the zoo. 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