william beebe obituary

[59][60] Beebe summarized this expedition in his book Our Search for a Wilderness, which was enthusiastically well-reviewed. [178], Although Beebe attempted to ensure that Barton would receive credit as the Bathysphere's inventor and Beebe's fellow diver, the popular media tended to ignore Barton and pay attention only to Beebe. [167] Beebe named their vessel the Bathysphere, from the Greek prefix bathy- meaning "deep" combined with "sphere". To plant a tree in memory of William D Beebe, please visit Tribute Store . [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. Dr. William A. Beebe of Weeki Wachee, Fla., formerly of Edison, died Tuesday at his home, surrounded by his loving family. [127] Beebe continued to battle depression during this trip to Kartabo, both over his earlier loss of Blair, and over the death of his mother Nettie, who had died shortly before the beginning of the expedition. [271], Gerhard Heilmann discussed Beebe's Tetrapteryx hypothesis at considerable length in his 1926 book The Origin of Birds. Burial is in the Cimarron Valley Cemetery, Lacey, OK under the direction of Ladusau-Evans Funeral Home. [182] Out of pragmatic concern for the success of their lives, they managed to resolve their disagreements well enough to work together at Nonsuch Island,[183] although they did not remain on good terms afterward. [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). [80], His expedition was completed after a total of 17 months, Beebe and Blair crossed the Pacific to San Francisco, then crossed the United States to return to their home in New York. [211] Beebe described his experiences at Rancho Grande in his 1949 book High Jungle, which was the last of Beebe's major books. [94], Beebe undertook an expedition to Brazil in 1915, to capture more birds for the zoo. [27] The following year he was promoted from assistant curator to the rank of a full curator, a post he held until 1918. [31][32] Beebe and Blair regarded their honeymoon, another trip to Nova Scotia, as a further opportunity for collecting. [257][258] The method he invented of methodically analyzing all organisms within a small area of wilderness has become a standard method in this field. [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. [221] Beebe's research at Simla combined elements of many different earlier stages of his research, including observations of the life cycles of the area's birds, detailed analyses of every plant and animal in small areas of forest, and studies of insect behavior. [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. Elswyth, who was most content in temperate environments, began searching for a home in New England where she could continue her writing. The first issue of the journal contained twenty papers, ten of which were written by Beebe, and two more of which were jointly written by him and Lee Saunders Crandall, the zoo's assistant curator of birds. [102][103] Combined with his earlier loss of Blair, the effect of losing Kalacoon plunged Beebe into depression. [219] In 1953, Beebe donated both properties to the New York Zoological Society for one dollar,[211] giving him the position of one of the society's "Benefactors in Perpetuity". [107], Beebe's position in the Zoological Society changed in 1918: He was given the title of Honorary Curator of Birds and was made the director of the newly created Department of Tropical Research. [192], During the two Zaca expeditions Beebe was accompanied by his longtime assistant John Tee-Van as well as Jocelyn Crane, a young carcinologist who had first worked for Beebe at Nonsuch Island in 1932,[193] and who would subsequently be among Beebe's most cherished associates for the rest of his life. With Roosevelt's help, he secured a post-training American pilot for a flight squadron on Long Island. [226][227] Jocelyn accompanied him on this expedition for the purpose of documenting Asia's fiddler crabs. Roosevelt in turn admired Beebe's writing and his respect for the natural world. [72] After Malaya, the next portion of their expedition took them to Burma, where they arrived in Rangoon and traveled by rail to Myitkyina. "[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. William Thomas Beebe. [247] He was highly critical of efforts to use science to justify political ideologies, such as socialism[248] or the belief that women were inferior to men. Burial will follow at Cimarron Valley Cemetery under direction of Cordry-Gritz Funeral Home. [36], In December 1903, to avert another bout of Beebe's throat ailment, Hornaday sent him on an expedition to Mexico which would last until the following April. [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. [58] Another goal of this expedition was to find and capture a hoatzin, a bird whose clawed wings caused it to be considered an important link in the evolution of birds from reptiles. [70] Horsfall rejoined them in Calcutta, from which they sailed to Indonesia. [55][56] Roosevelt frequently provided praise for Beebe's books, and went on to write introductions to Beebe's books Tropical Wild Life and Jungle Peace. William W. Beebe, Jr. of Silver Springs, Florida passed away on Wednesday, July 6, 2022 at the age of 64. [50], In 1907, the journal Zoologica was founded by Osborn and Hornaday specifically as a place for Beebe to publish his research. He attended and graduated from Hennessey High School. [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. On August 6, 1902, Beebe was married to Mary Blair Rice, better known by her pen name Blair Niles. 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. 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. Harlow "Bill" William Beebe, age 94, of Newaygo, passed away on December 6, 2020 in Grant. He also spent time in trenches and accompanied a Canadian Indian platoon on a night raid. Smith Family Funeral Home obituaries and Death Notices for the Little Rock, AR area. [149] Beebe provided an account of this expedition in his 1928 book Beneath Tropic Seas, which was the first of his books to receive less than enthusiastic reviews, due to its episodic structure.[150]. [255] Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr. recounts one incident in which Beebe turned down a scientist who wished to work with him when the scientist described boredom with his current duties as one of his reasons for requesting this. Beebe's second book, The Bird, Its Form and Function, was published in 1906. [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. [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. [146], In 1927, Beebe went on an expedition to Haiti to document its marine life. [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. [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. [233] However, by 1959 his strength had lessened enough that long hikes and tree climbing were no longer practical for him, and he contented himself with work that could be conducted in the laboratory, such as dissecting birds' nests to analyze their method of construction. Charles William Beebe was born in Brooklyn, New York, son of the newspaper executive Charles Beebe. [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. [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. Heilmann examined hatchlings of many other bird species, both closely related to those studied by Beebe and belonging to more primitive species, in hope of finding additional evidence for the leg-wings which Beebe had documented. [77][78], The last portion of Beebe's journey took him to China, from which they made an unplanned visit to Japan to escape a riot as well as a surge of bubonic plague. [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. [241] Even in the possession of Firestone Library, Beebe's papers remained inaccessible without Jocelyn's permission, and most scholars were prevented from using them until Jocelyn offered access to the writer, Carol Grant Gould, to write Beebe's biography. He was born on Oct. 7, 1982, in Marietta, to Gary and. Please accept Echovita's sincere condolences. [260], E. O. Wilson, Sylvia Earle and Ernst Mayr have all described Beebe's work as an influence on their own choice of careers. [29][30] Blair subsequently accompanied Beebe on several of his expeditions, and as a writer herself, frequently assisted Beebe with his own writing. [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. 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. During the course of his expeditions, Beebe gradually developed an interest in marine biology, ultimately leading to his 1930s dives in the Bathysphere, along with its inventor, Otis Barton, off the coast of Bermuda. [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. [217], At Simla Beebe and his team worked closely together with Asa and Newcome Wright, the owners of the adjacent Spring Hill estate, who provided accommodations for them while water and electricity were connected at Simla. [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. 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. Despite their failure to obtain their most sought-after prize, the expedition still returned with 280 live birds of 51 species, 33 of which were new to the zoo, although several of these died or escaped during the long trip back to New York. She was born on November 26, 1937, in Plainfield, NJ, the daughter of the late William H. Vermilye and Ruth Anderson Vermilye. Anchoring in a small cove, Beebe and his assistant John Tee-Van searched for an active crater where they could observe the eruption and were nearing exhaustion by the time they found one. To some men, the jungle is a tangled place of heat and danger. The same year, he was also elected a fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences. [176] Although Beebe and Barton performed no dives in 1933, their work gathered a large amount of publicity when the Bathysphere was displayed in a special exhibit for the American Museum of Natural History, and later at the Century of Progress World's Fair in Chicago, where they shared the fair's Hall of Science with Auguste Piccard. Following Beebe's death, Jocelyn succeeded him as the director of the Department of Tropical Research and continued to run the Simla station along with the rest of Beebe's former staff.[240]. Beebe renamed the estate Simla, after the hill in India that featured in Rudyard Kipling's writings. [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. [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. [104][110] In January 1919 Roosevelt, who was severely ill by this point, wrote to Beebe from his hospital bed congratulating Beebe on the publication of his monograph. [128], Despite his ongoing research in Guiana, what Beebe desired most was to return to the Galpagos, this time with a properly fitted-out scientific research vessel that possessed the ability to dredge animals from beneath the ocean. William met and married Sandra K. Herring. As he gained experience with helmet diving, Beebe soon became an enthusiastic advocate of it, believing it to be something that should be experienced by everyone who had the opportunity to do so. [170] Beebe's observations were relayed up the phone line to be recorded by Gloria Hollister,[171] his chief technical associate who was also in charge of preparing specimens obtained from dredging. [114], During the course of his career, Beebe authored over 800 articles and 21 books, including his four-volume pheasant monograph. Although it was intended as an expedition for the zoo, Beebe described it as "our third honeymoon this year". This expedition marked the beginning of a shift for Beebe from ornithology to the study of tropical ecosystems. Who Where Receive obituaries Wilma Campbell February 22, 2023 (87 years old) View obituary Connie McAfee February 22, 2023 (61 years old) View obituary Published on March 29, 2022 . 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. Beebe compared the knowledge that could be gained of the deep ocean from dredging to what a visitor from Mars could learn about a fog-shrouded earthly city by using a dredge to pick up bits of debris from a street. "[87] Beebe made very little effort to contest the divorce and did not appear in court to offer any testimony. An additional difficulty in 1931 was the death of Beebe's father, and Beebe left Nonsuch Island for a week to attend his father's funeral. John William Coulter Obituary. I saw it because I was looking down. William D Beebe. [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. [92] Due to the elaborate nature of the book's color artwork, no American publisher was considered capable of reproducing it. Since the purpose of Kalacoon station had been to study the jungle, the jungle's destruction left Beebe with no choice but to close the station and return with its supplies to New York. 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. Beebe admired Roosevelt's skill as a field naturalist as well as his advocacy of conservation, and Roosevelt's fame made his support highly valuable in Beebe's scientific endeavors. [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". Connie McAfee Obituary. [238][239] According to his wishes, he was buried in Mucurapo Cemetery in Port of Spain. Passed away at the Charles Lemoyne Hospital at the age of 62 after a brief but courageously fought battle. The publisher which Beebe chose for his work was George Witherby and Sons of London, as a result of their success publishing the artwork of John James Audubon. [90], Blair's departure came as a shock to Beebe, and he was severely depressed for more than a year afterward. One night three giant fruit bats flew over the face of the moon. [24] This was eventually built, although at less than half the size that Beebe had originally requested. His observations documented several behaviors which were new to science, including the first documented example of play in birds. U.S., Newspapers.com Obituary Index, 1800s-current. We are sad to announce that on July 6, 2022, at the age of 64, William W. Beebe of Silver Springs, Florida passed away. [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). To plant a tree in memory of David William Beebe, III, please visit Tribute Store . [114][263] This was particularly significant in the area of conservation, of which he was one of the most important early advocates. [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. [49] In 1906 Beebe presented his own collection, which had grown to 990 specimens during his earlier years as a collector, as a gift to the zoo for educational and research purposes. He was born in Westchester, Pennsylvania and moved to central Florida in the early.

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william beebe obituary