Leave a sympathy message to the family on the memorial page of William Beebe to pay them a last tribute. William met and married Sandra K. Herring. [8], In September 1891, Beebe began attending East Orange High School. WILBUR "BILL" BEEBE | Obituary | Pittsburgh Post Gazette WILBUR "BILL" BEEBE December 10, 1943 - March 4, 2022 Age 78, of Plum Boro, passed away peacefully on March 4, 2022. Family and friends can send flowers and/or light a candle as a loving gesture for their loved one. [117][118], Beebe was eager to undertake an expedition to the Galpagos Islands, intending to obtain more detailed data in support of evolution than Charles Darwin had been able to collect in his earlier visit. Elswyth, who was most content in temperate environments, began searching for a home in New England where she could continue her writing. Visitation Thursday 6-7 pm at the funeral home. [229] Snow became a regular visitor to Simla,[230] and in return Beebe provided financial assistance for some of Snow's own research. John William Coulter Obituary. BEEBE, WILLIAM GEERDS Holland William Geerds Beebe, aged 66, of Holland, Michigan passed away Thursday, September 5th, in his home. Letters and testimonials poured in from other scientists with whom Beebe had worked, attesting to their admiration of him and his influence on them. [226][227] Jocelyn accompanied him on this expedition for the purpose of documenting Asia's fiddler crabs. [220], Research at Simla formally began in 1950. [216] In 1949, Beebe bought this estate to use a permanent research station to replace Rancho Grande. [266] Some of Beebe's critics claimed that these fish were illusions resulting from condensation on the Bathysphere's window, or even that Beebe willfully made them up, although the latter would have been strongly at odds with Beebe's reputation as an honest and rigorous scientist. Beebe had frequently worried that Elswyth would write a biography of him after his death. He was born on February 26, 1926 to Gerald and Nora (Curtice) Beebe in Fremont, Michigan. October 18, 1943 - September 4, 2020. Burial is in the Cimarron Valley Cemetery, Lacey, OK under the direction of Ladusau-Evans Funeral Home. View Source Share Save to Suggest Edits Memorial Photos Flowers Memorials Region North America USA Oklahoma 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. This study yielded a collection of 3,776 fish of 136 species, many of them also new to science. [50], In 1907, the journal Zoologica was founded by Osborn and Hornaday specifically as a place for Beebe to publish his research. [81] Some of these pheasants, such as Sclater's impeyan or Himalayan monal, had never before been seen in the wild by Americans or Europeans. Arcturus, at 280ft (85.3m), was considerably larger than the Noma and was capable of being at sea for extended periods of time. [89] On the other hand, some biographers have suggested that Beebe suffered a nervous breakdown during the expedition and that he may have contributed his own part to Blair's alienation. Using Kalacoon as his base of operations, Beebe performed a novel type of study: methodically dissecting a small area of jungle, and all of the animals which inhabit it, from the top of the canopy to below the ground. 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. . [249] Beebe also disapproved of the eugenic ideas advocated by many biologists in the early 20th century, including some of his contemporaries at the zoo, although this was largely out of fear that these ideas would alienate friends of the zoo and cause divisions among its staff. Beebe based this theory on his observation that the hatchlings and embryos of some modern birds possess long quill feathers on their legs, which he regarded as an atavism; he also noticed vestiges of leg-wings on one of the specimens of Archaeopteryx. [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. A Memorial Mass will be held on Saturday at 10 a.m. at St. [218] Although the initial purchase of Simla had contained only the house and 22 acres (0.089km2) of the forest surrounding it, Beebe soon realized that this was insufficient for the research he wished to conduct, and purchased another neighboring estate known as St. Pat's which contained an additional 170 acres (0.69km2). 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. [272] Beebe, however, continued to advance his Tetrapteryx hypothesis as late as the 1940s. [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. [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. [250], Beebe had a troubled relationship with some of his superiors at the zoo, particularly Hornaday, who was resentful of Beebe's constant demands for more funding and staff, as well as the fact that as Beebe's career progressed he gradually devoted less and less time to care for the zoo itself. [73] Continuing without Horsfall, Beebe and Blair traveled to Batavia in Java,[74] to the island of Madura just to the north, and to Belitung between Borneo and Sumatra. [142], Shortly after Beebe's return from this expedition, Anthony Kuser requested that Beebe produce a condensed, popular version of his pheasant monograph. [19], In November 1897, Frank Chapman sponsored Beebe to become an associate member of the American Ornithologists' Union, and the following month Beebe gave his first professional lecture on ornithology to a society called Uncle Clarence's Bergen Point Culture Club. William Beebe Obituary With heavy hearts, we announce the death of William Beebe of Enid, Oklahoma, who passed away on September 4, 2020. [70] Horsfall rejoined them in Calcutta, from which they sailed to Indonesia. [177] Beebe and Barton also obtained publicity for their dives from several articles Beebe wrote describing them for National Geographic, and from an NBC radio broadcast in which Beebe's voice transmitted up the phone line from inside the Bathysphere was broadcast nationally over the radio. [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. 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. [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. Although Jocelyn's studies during this expedition served as part of the basis for her monograph Fiddler Crabs of the World,[228] Beebe never published the results of his own observations during it. 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. In 1928 Beebe and Tee-Van published an illustrated and annotated list of 270 such species, which was expanded in 1935 bringing the total to 324. [68] By this point Beebe was beginning to conflict with Horsfall, who was unaccustomed to such expeditions. [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. 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. [223] Local children periodically brought animal specimens to Beebe at Simla and asked him to classify them. 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. [137] Beebe continued to perform helmet dives throughout his Galpagos expedition, documenting several previously unknown sea animals. [179] Barton was often resentful of this, believing Beebe to be deliberately hogging the fame. [146], In 1927, Beebe went on an expedition to Haiti to document its marine life. His observations documented several behaviors which were new to science, including the first documented example of play in birds. In response to Beebe's dismissal, Horsfall retorted that he had been ill-treated by Beebe from the beginning of the expedition and that his subsequent actions had been for the express purpose of revenge. [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. To prevent this possibility, he left all of his papers and journals to Jocelyn. He was predeceased by : his parents, Charles Beebe and Ellen Beebe. He retired in 1996 from Quali-Chem, had also worked for DuBois Chemical, and was a milkman for Superior Dairy. [106] The best-known of these accounts is provided by the opening paragraph of his 1918 book Jungle Peace: After creeping through slime-filled holes beneath the shrieking of swift metal; after splashing one's plane through companionable clouds three miles above the little jagged, hero-filled ditches, and dodging other sudden-born clouds of nauseous fumes and blasting heart of steel; after these, one craves thoughts of comfortable hens, sweet apple orchards, or the ineffable themes of opera. This expedition was Beebe's introduction to the tropics, with which he developed a long-standing fascination. He graduated from Fremont High School in 1947, after returning from an enlistment with the U.S. Navy. [95], In 1916, Beebe traveled to Georgetown in pursuit of his earlier goal of establishing a permanent field research station in Guiana. [66], After crossing the Atlantic Ocean on the RMS Lusitania to London, where they gathered the supplies they would need for their expedition, Beebe and his team traveled across the Mediterranean Sea to Egypt, through the Suez Canal, and across the Indian Ocean to Ceylon, where they began their task of documenting the native wildfowl. [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. 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. "[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 is remembered for the numerous expeditions he conducted for the New York Zoological Society, his deep dives in the Bathysphere, and his prolific scientific writing for academic and popular audiences. Memorial services were held in both Trinidad and Tobago and New York City so that Beebe's friends in both parts of the world could attend. [91], By the end of 1914, Beebe's pheasant monograph was essentially complete in the manuscript. 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. Service for William D. "Bill" Beebe, age 76, of Enid is Friday, September 11, 2020 at 10:00 am at Ladusau-Evans Funeral Home. [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. [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. [197] Transportation to and from Bermuda resumed in 1940, and Beebe returned there in May 1941, but the environment was slowly being transformed due to the war. 488 Obituaries Search Beebe obituaries and condolences, hosted by Echovita.com. [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. [29][30] Blair subsequently accompanied Beebe on several of his expeditions, and as a writer herself, frequently assisted Beebe with his own writing. [46][47] It also represented an important turning point for Beebe, because in contrast to his youthful fascination with adding animals to his collection, in this book he was beginning to emphasize the importance of wildlife conservation. Leave a . 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. With the help of a letter of recommendation from Roosevelt, he was given the duty of flying aerial photography planes over German gun emplacements. [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. [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. 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. [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. [115] Beebe was enthusiastic about the new station, and it proved very successful for conducting the same detailed analyses of wildlife within small areas that had been performed at Kalacoon. [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. Beebe and his team began work there in 1945, staying as guests of the Venezuelan government. [202] For these reasons, Beebe did not return to Caripito after his first season there. View Obituary & Service Information [211] Beebe described his experiences at Rancho Grande in his 1949 book High Jungle, which was the last of Beebe's major books. In Japan, Beebe was given two cranes by the Imperial Household in exchange for a pair of swans, which were unknown in Japan. [95] This expedition was an important turning point for Beebe in several ways. 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. [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. William worked many years in the grocery business in sales and held various managerial . [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. [139], While anchored off the Galpagos, Beebe and his crew noticed volcanic activity on Albemarle Island, and set out to investigate it. Jocelyn accompanied him on this expedition was an important turning point for Beebe Fremont. A sympathy message to the family on the memorial page of William Beebe to be deliberately hogging the fame a! 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