Leave a . [229] Snow became a regular visitor to Simla,[230] and in return Beebe provided financial assistance for some of Snow's own research. Text size. [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. In October 1917, Beebe had his opportunity to serve in the war. [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. [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. In 1923, Harrison Williams agreed to finance such an expedition, and Beebe was provided with a 250-foot (76m) steam yacht called the Noma for this purpose along with a support crew. [184], Likely, Beebe became romantically involved with Hollister during his work at Nonsuch Island. [91], By the end of 1914, Beebe's pheasant monograph was essentially complete in the manuscript. [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. [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. [69] After Beebe had finished his documentation in the eastern part of the range, Horsfall refused to accompany Beebe in the western part of the range, causing Beebe to leave him in the town of Jorepokhri and continue his work in the Western Himalayas without him. Marguerite Vermilye Beebe died on Thursday, April 2, 2020, at Talbot Hospice House in Easton, MD. [116] At Kartabo Beebe discovered the phenomenon known as an ant mill, a column of ants following itself in an endless loop until nearly all of them died of exhaustion. To plant a tree in memory of William D Beebe . [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. [195] During this time Beebe was also forming a close friendship with Winnie-the-Pooh's creator A. In response to this request, Beebe retorted: Boredom is immoral. [175] A second year-long interruption occurred in 1933, and was caused in part by a lack of funds due to the Great Depression. [126], In 1924, Beebe went on another expedition to his Guiana research station of Kartabo, intending to continue the detailed documentation of the tropical ecosystem that he had begun at Kalacoon. It is now once again actively involved in research and an important gathering place for scientists. [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. Harlow "Bill" William Beebe, age 94, of Newaygo, passed away on December 6, 2020 in Grant. [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. [156], Although Riders of the Wind was partially based on Beebe's pheasant expedition,[157] Elswyth did not enjoy Beebe's current research. [71] The next ship took them to Singapore, where Beebe established a base of operations for the next stage of his expedition. 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. [272] Beebe, however, continued to advance his Tetrapteryx hypothesis as late as the 1940s. [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 also spent time in trenches and accompanied a Canadian Indian platoon on a night raid. William met and married Sandra K. Herring. [147] These dives involved several technological innovations: a watertight brass box which could be used to house a camera for underwater photography, and a telephone which was incorporated into the diving helmet, allowing the diver to dictate observations to someone on the surface instead of having to take notes underwater. He was born January 23, 1941 in Toledo Ohio to Ronald Sinclair and Mary Jane (Buermile) Beebe. [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. He was predeceased by : his parents, Charles Beebe and Ellen Beebe. Family and friends are welcome to send flowersor leave their condolences on this memorial page and share them with the family. His terrace there was decorated with statues of characters from Winnie-the-Pooh that had been a gift from A. 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. [256], William Beebe was a pioneer in the field now known as ecology. Elswyth, who was most content in temperate environments, began searching for a home in New England where she could continue her writing. 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. With the help of a letter of recommendation from Roosevelt, he was given the duty of flying aerial photography planes over German gun emplacements. All a man has to do is see. [29][30] Blair subsequently accompanied Beebe on several of his expeditions, and as a writer herself, frequently assisted Beebe with his own writing. 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. [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's Tetrapteryx hypothesis is now regarded as prescient for its prediction of both the anatomy and likely gliding posture of Microraptor gui,[274] which Richard O. Prum has described as "[looking] as if it could have glided straight out of the pages of Beebes notebooks. 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. Bill was born October 18, 1943 near Hennessey, OK to Othel "Oat" and Nellie McCartney Beebe and passed away on September 4, 2020 at his home. William Beebe, in full Charles William Beebe, (born July 29, 1877, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.died June 4, 1962, Simla Research Station, near Arima, Trinidad), American biologist, explorer, and writer on natural history who combined careful biological research with a rare literary skill. [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. [102][103] Combined with his earlier loss of Blair, the effect of losing Kalacoon plunged Beebe into depression. [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. Connie McAfee Obituary. [160] However, Beebe's ability to research the deep ocean using these methods was constrained by the inherent limitations of dredging, which could only provide an incomplete picture of the animals living there. [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. [139], While anchored off the Galpagos, Beebe and his crew noticed volcanic activity on Albemarle Island, and set out to investigate it. To some men, the jungle is a tangled place of heat and danger. [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. [194][217] He later described the sense of destiny that marked his introduction to the estate: We had climbed the winding road in a tropical downpour. In lieu of flowers, donations in memory of William can be made to the Lung Association of Saskatchewan. [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. [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. [155] Elswyth and Beebe had an open marriage, in which neither expected sexual exclusivity from the other so long as their life together was not damaged. [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". 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. Although some sources have described him as an only child,[3] he had a younger brother named John who died in infancy. He attended and graduated from Hennessey High School. He was born on Oct. 7, 1982, in Marietta, to Gary and. 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. Beebe's research at Simla continued until his death from pneumonia in 1962 at the age of 84. And when nerves have cried for a time "enough" and an unsteady hand threatens to turn a joystick into a signpost to Charon, the mind seeks ameliorationsome symbol of worthy content and peaceand for my part, I turn with all desire to the jungles of the tropics. 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. [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. For his contributions to science, he was elected a fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. [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. [162] The New York Times carried articles describing Beebe's plans, which called for a diving bell with the shape of a cylinder. [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. [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. We would not have been human if we had refused to recognize omens. 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. 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. [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. [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. [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. [231] Beebe devised an unusual method for determining how he would react to his visitors at Simla. [122] During this expedition he documented the unique ways that animals that inhabit the Galpagos have evolved in response to the absence of predators. [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. Arrangements entrusted to Regina Funeral Home (306) 789-8850. [24], Beebe nonetheless exhibited a high degree of loyalty to those employees who were capable of meeting his standards. [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. View Obituary & Service Information [237] Both accounts agree that throughout his final years Beebe remained fond of playing practical jokes on his visitors at Simla,[237] and retained his sense of humor even within days of his death. [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. [279] By 1971, the station had fallen into disuse and was declared closed. [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. [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. 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. Beebe renamed the estate Simla, after the hill in India that featured in Rudyard Kipling's writings. [108], The first volume of Beebe's pheasant monograph was published that fall, although the ongoing war made it unclear when the remaining three volumes would be published. 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. [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. Published on September 4, 2020. [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. Burial is in the Cimarron Valley Cemetery, Lacey, OK under the direction of Ladusau-Evans Funeral Home. 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. [48], Although Beebe continued to shoot animals when it was necessary for examining them scientifically, he no longer regarded adding to a collection as a valid reason to take a life. [59][60] Beebe summarized this expedition in his book Our Search for a Wilderness, which was enthusiastically well-reviewed. [31][40] Beebe's first book, titled Two Bird Lovers in Mexico, was an account of this expedition. [143] The book which resulted from this, titled Pheasants: Their Lives and Homes (also known by the title Pheasants of the World), was released in 1926 and received the John Burroughs Medal. 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. 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