Due to Elswyth's tendency to misrepresent her age, conflicting accounts exist of how old she was when she and Beebe were married,[155] ranging from 23[91] to 28. [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. 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. Reproductions of the illustrations were in the process of being printed when World War I began, holding up the completion of the project for the next four years. A. Milne. [227], During Beebe's later years, Simla was an important gathering point for researchers in many other areas of biology. [71] The next ship took them to Singapore, where Beebe established a base of operations for the next stage of his expedition. [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. [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. [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. [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. [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. Following his Bathysphere dives, Beebe returned to the tropics and began to focus his study on the behavior of insects. As a compromise, Beebe decided to continue his marine research in Bermuda, where she and Beebe had spent their honeymoon. [166] Barton had the good fortune that years earlier, Theodore Roosevelt had proposed a similar idea to Beebe, and Beebe approved of Barton's design. 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. Explore Life Stories, Offer Condolences & Send Flowers. [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. William Thomas Beebe. In a second study, Beebe performed the same task for a much larger area of jungle, approximately a quarter-mile (0.4 km) square. William Beebe was more famous in the United States than any other American naturalist before the days of television. [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. Death Notice. [280] Meanwhile, as Asa Wright's health began to fail in her old age, her friends began to fear that after her death her neighboring estate of Spring Hill might be lost to developers and established a trust to buy the estate and convert it into the Asa Wright nature center. John William Coulter Obituary. Beebe's research at Simla continued until his death from pneumonia in 1962 at the age of 84. [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. He also spent time in trenches and accompanied a Canadian Indian platoon on a night raid. [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. [272] Beebe, however, continued to advance his Tetrapteryx hypothesis as late as the 1940s. [89] Despite her assistance during the pheasant expedition, Beebe excised any mention of her from the monograph he was preparing based on the data gathered during it. He was born January 23, 1941 in Toledo Ohio to Ronald Sinclair and Mary Jane (Buermile) Beebe. [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. 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. 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. 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. 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. William Lee Beebe of Marietta, passed on, Friday (Aug. 2, 2013) at the young age of 30 due to injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident. William Thomas Beebe, who retired last year as board chairman of Delta Air Lines, died of a heart attack Saturday after surgery at Doctors Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. [163][164], These articles caught the attention of Otis Barton, an engineer who had long admired Beebe and who had his own ambition to become a deep-sea explorer. Letters and testimonials poured in from other scientists with whom Beebe had worked, attesting to their admiration of him and his influence on them. 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. He sailed along the border between the currents for several days to document it, theorizing that it could be the cause of the unusual climate which South America had recently been experiencing. 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. She was 82. [273], In 2003, Beebe's Tetrapteryx hypothesis was supported by the discovery of Microraptor gui, a small feathered dinosaur which possessed asymmetrical flight feathers on both its front and hind limbs. [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. (Hall) Beebe, he married Janice Sue "Jan" Gainer on September 20, 1968 in Pekin. 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. 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. [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. [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. View Obituary & Service Information [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. [] One of the few things in the world of which I am really proud is that I know Will Beebe. All about us, nature puts on the most thrilling adventure stories ever created, but we have to use our eyes. Although this evolutionary model is now taken for granted, in William Beebe's time it was a novel idea. [23] Beebe placed much importance on the birds being given as much space as possible, and proposed the building of a "flying cage" the size of a football field. 1930 United States Federal Census. I was walking across our compound last month when a queen termite began building her miraculous city. This expedition was Beebe's introduction to the tropics, with which he developed a long-standing fascination. He was 73. [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. [50], In 1907, the journal Zoologica was founded by Osborn and Hornaday specifically as a place for Beebe to publish his research. He was predeceased by : his parents, Charles Beebe and Ellen Beebe. [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. Published on March 29, 2022 . [162] The New York Times carried articles describing Beebe's plans, which called for a diving bell with the shape of a cylinder. 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. He was born in. "[87] Beebe made very little effort to contest the divorce and did not appear in court to offer any testimony. [282], Now under the management of the Asa Wright Nature Center, the William Beebe Tropical Research Station has gradually been renovated. To prevent this possibility, he left all of his papers and journals to Jocelyn. This promotion explicitly granted him two months off each year, for further research expeditions. 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. [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. 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. William D Beebe. "[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. [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. 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. William 'Bill' Harley 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. 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. On August 6, 1902, Beebe was married to Mary Blair Rice, better known by her pen name Blair Niles. [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. [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. The novel was an account of a young woman who falls in love with and eventually marries, a much older adventurer who strongly resembled Beebe. [35], By the end of 1903, at the age of 26, Beebe had published more than thirty-four articles and photographs in the past year. [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. Leave a . 488 Obituaries Search Beebe obituaries and condolences, hosted by Echovita.com. All of his papers and journals to Jocelyn hypothesis as late as the 1940s, for further research.! His Bathysphere dives, Beebe was more famous in the world of I. 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