Barton was convinced that Beebe's design for a diving vessel would never be capable of withstanding the extreme pressure of the deep ocean,[165] and with the help of a friend who arranged a meeting with Beebe, proposed an alternative design to him. I saw them because I was looking up. To plant a tree in memory of William D Beebe, please visit Tribute Store . His letter of congratulation to Beebe was the last letter that Roosevelt wrote before his death. He was born on Oct. 7, 1982, in Marietta, to Gary and. [93] The reproduction of the illustrations themselves was to be handled by several companies in Germany and Austria. [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. [220][223] In honor of his lifetime of work as a naturalist, Beebe was awarded the Theodore Roosevelt Distinguished Service Medal in 1953. 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. I was walking across our compound last month when a queen termite began building her miraculous city. Charles William Beebe was born in Brooklyn, New York, son of the newspaper executive Charles Beebe. 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. 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. Text size. In response to this request, Beebe retorted: Boredom is immoral. 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. [272] Beebe, however, continued to advance his Tetrapteryx hypothesis as late as the 1940s. [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. A MEMORIAL SERVICE will be held at St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church 100 Argyle Street, Regina, Saskatchewan on Thursday, May 12, 2005 at 11:00am. 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. [72], Finished in Java, Beebe and his crew sailed north from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur to begin exploring Malaya. Visitation Thursday 6-7 pm at the funeral home. 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. To some men, the jungle is a tangled place of heat and danger. [45] In its finished form it represented a new kind of nature writing in that, although it presented technical information about bird biology and evolution, it did so in a way meant to be accessible to a general audience. [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. Wedge these into crevices, and in a few days, you will have a sunken garden in a new and miraculous sense. "[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. [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. [28] He then went on to serve as an honorary curator from 1919 to 1962. Searching for a way to satisfy his expedition's donors, Beebe hit upon the idea of documenting the marine life of the Hudson Gorge just beyond the shore of New York City. [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. [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. [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. [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. [264] However, Beebe's prolific writing for a popular audience had a downside, in that other scientists of his time were reluctant to hold him in high accord because they regarded him as a popularizer. [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. Roosevelt subsequently wrote an article about the station for Scribner's Magazine, which helped to build public support for the station.[98]. [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. Family and friends can send flowers and/or light a candle as a loving gesture for their loved one. Although this evolutionary model is now taken for granted, in William Beebe's time it was a novel idea. William Beebe is regarded as one of the founders of the field of ecology, as well as one of the early 20th century's major advocates of conservation. [67] From Ceylon they traveled to Calcutta, with the goal of capturing the species of pheasants which live only in the Himalayas. 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. [146], In 1927, Beebe went on an expedition to Haiti to document its marine life. [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. 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. [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. He was 69 years old and. In recognition of the research conducted on his expeditions, he was granted honorary doctorates from Tufts and Colgate University. [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. Beebe had frequently worried that Elswyth would write a biography of him after his death. Born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in East Orange, New Jersey, Beebe left college before obtaining a degree to work at the then newly opened New York Zoological Park, where he was given the duty of caring for the zoo's birds. We are sad to announce that on November 26, 2021, at the age of 79, John William Coulter of Beebe, Arkansas passed away. 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. [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. [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. William R Beebe age 79 of Delta, Ohio, passed away at Swanton Health care and retirement Center Sunday, October 25, 2020. [162] The New York Times carried articles describing Beebe's plans, which called for a diving bell with the shape of a cylinder. [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. [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. Anchoring his ship the Lieutenant in the harbor of Port-au-Prince, he performed over 300 helmet dives examining the area's coral reefs and classifying the fish that inhabited them. [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. [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. He retired in 1996 from Quali-Chem, had also worked for DuBois Chemical, and was a milkman for Superior Dairy. [181] Still, Beebe and Barton both had something the other needed: Beebe for his experience as a marine biologist and Barton for his mechanical skill. 488 Obituaries Search Beebe obituaries and condolences, hosted by Echovita.com. For this gift, he was made a life member of the New York Zoological Society. [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. [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. [210][232], Beebe remained active well into his old age. Beebe described his idea in a 1915 paper published in Zoologica, titled "A Tetrapteryx Stage in the Ancestry of Birds". The support crew included several scientists who had worked with Beebe previously and several artists including the marine painter Harry Hoffman,[119] as well as some of Williams' friends whose inclusion was a condition for Williams' agreement to fund the expedition. [47] Regarding the killing of animals for the sole purpose of collecting, the book states: And the next time you raise your gun to needlessly take a feathered life, think of the marvelous little engine which your lead will stifle forever; lower your weapon and look into the clear bright eyes of the bird whose body equals yours in physical perfection, and whose tiny brain can generate a sympathy, a love for its mate, which is sincerity and unselfishness suffers little when compared with human affection. [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 lieu of flowers, donations in memory of William can be made to the Lung Association of Saskatchewan. 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. [84], In January 1913, Blair left Beebe for Reno intending to divorce him, since at this time in history it was easier to obtain a divorce in Reno than in most other areas of the United States. [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. [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. He is also remembered for several theories he proposed about avian evolution which are now regarded as having been ahead of their time, particularly his 1915 hypothesis that the evolution of bird flight passed through a four-winged or "Tetrapteryx" stage, which has been supported by the 2003 discovery of Microraptor gui. July 6, 1958 - July 6, 2022 (64 years old) Silver Springs, Florida William W. Beebe Obituary Here is William W. Beebe's obituary. Recognition of the illustrations themselves was to be handled by several companies Germany. Life member of the illustrations themselves was to be handled by several in. 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