January 03, 2008
New Hampshire Primary Redux
The non-stop coverage of the election that won’t end will soon turn its focus from Iowa to New Hampshire. The thought makes me nostalgic for those halcyon days when I too was a newsman covering the presidential candidates in their glorious quest for the best home-office in America.
The year was 1988, and I was a producer for a Boston TV station. The wise elders there generally kept me inside the newsroom, chained to a desk, where I could provide brilliant direction for those poor souls out in the field. My job was to offer reporters guidance in their never ending search for Truth, or if Truth was in short supply, at least something to fill a minute and a half on the 11 o'clock News.
But as the 1988 primary season began, the powers that be deemed it important for me to expand my horizons. So I was sent up into the great rolling stretch of suburbia that constitutes southern New Hampshire to help cover the first in the nation New Hampshire Primary. Here was my chance to put all my years of education and accumulated political acumen to work.
My first assignment was to field produce a live interview with Bob Dole. I poured him a glass of water, fixed his tie, and reminded him what state he was in. A real test of my skills!
On my second day I interviewed Mike Dukakis. He told me he was not a technocrat. For some reason my bosses weren't interested in this piece of exclusive news. So instead we showed a picture of Mike Dukakis whistling. I didn't know what he was whistling, which suggested to me the need to beef up my investigative reporting skills.
On Day three I was assigned to cover Vice-President Bush on his whistle-stop bus tour through Southern new Hampshire. Up until then I wasn't even aware that busses had whistles. The first event was at a truck stop where I was able to observe the vaunted national media in action. They all crowded into the gift stories like a gang of drunken Hells Angels, and bought hats with four letter words on them. Hats that said: “S___ happens.” The vice president thought the hats were funny, and couldn't stop giggling at them. That of course was not news. Then he climbed into an 18 wheeler and drove it around the parking lot, with Secret Service men hanging off the side. That of course was news. I complimented myself that I could tell the difference.
After three days of generating this hard-hitting political coverage, the station suddenly decided to send me back to Boston. I was too valuable inside, they said, to waste my considerable talents outside. What a shame. I was just getting the hang of it.
Now I watch from the sidelines. Never again will I adjust Bob Dole's tie, or chase the Vice President around a truck-stop. But I remain proud of my unique contributions to the American political dialogue.
Posted by rickbeyer at 06:54 AM | Comments (0)
December 18, 2007
Op Ed Piece in Politico
The New Hampshire Primary: Was it’s “First in the Nation” status consecrated by a crusading band of constitutional angels? Or does its origin have more to do with a man named Winston Churchill?
Check out my op-ed piece “Granite doesn’t last forever” on today’s Ideas page of the new online publication The Politico.
BTW, The Politico is a multi-media publication launched in January, 2007 with the mission of covering the politics of Capitol Hill and of the presidential campaign, and the business of Washington lobbying. It has proven fabulously successful at drawing online readers and making a name for itself.
Posted by rickbeyer at 09:00 AM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2007
The Battle Road
I went for a bike ride early the other morning on the Battle Road through the Minuteman National Park. It is a dirt road/path(no cars) that meanders through shaded glens, past historic farms, and by carefully restored colonial buildings. It traces part of the route along which British soldiers and American colonists battle on the April 19th, 1775, the first day of the American Revolution.
It is a ride I go on often. In the early mornings, before the tourist foot traffic gets too heavy, it is quite peaceful-a great deal more peaceful than it likely was back on the historic day!
One of my favorite buildings on the path is the William Smith house. (Click on the picture at left to see a larger version.) More than any other building in the park, it always looks to me as if it was just plucked from the 18th century and plopped into the 20th for our viewing history. I don’t know if it is the materials, the setting, or what, but it calls to me every time I ride by.
BTW, William Smith was one of the commanders of the Lincoln Militia, which played an active role in the fighting that day. Although you may not have heard of him, you might know his sister Abigail Smith, who some years before had married an up and coming lawyer named John Adams.
Ah, recreation and revolution all in one bike ride. A great way to start the day!
Posted by rickbeyer at 08:30 PM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2007
My Horse, My horse, My Kingdom for a Horse
We went to see the Redfeather Theater Company's performance of Richard III last night. The play was performed in a delightful outdoor amphitheater in Worcester's Greenhill Park. Who knew you could find so much culture in Worcester? (OK, I am now readying myself for the deluge of criticism from outraged Worcesterians, or whatever people who live there call themselves.)
The play was Shakespeare's first break-out success, and it is wonderfully entertaining. Richard is evil incarnate, but a source of amusement as well, as he shares with the audience all his dastardly plans, joking about all the people he has a) already murdered or b) is about to murder. The body count really piles up. Richard kills off a half dozen characters--enemies, friends, innocent children--all of whom come back to haunt him in his dreams the night before the Battle of Bosworth Field, where he was killed in 1485.
The role of the original "Tricky Dick" is one that actors from Burbage to Olivier have gloriously inhabited (and who can forget Richard Dreyfus preparing to play a gay Richard III in the movie The Goodbye Girl.) Our friend Tim Smith played the role last night, and he did an exquisite job, alternatively menacing, charming, frightening and funny.
I spotted two women handing out flyers at halftime, asking audience members if they wanted to know "the real story." It turns out that the women (and the flyers) were from the Richard III Society. This is an organization dedicated to convincing people that Shakespeare gave Richard a bum rap. Or, as stated in their mission statement:
In the belief that many features of the traditional accounts of the character and career of Richard III are neither supported by sufficient evidence nor reasonably tenable, the Society aims to promote, in every possible way, research into the life and times of Richard III, and to secure a reassessment of the material relating to this period, and of the role of this monarch in English history.
How British!!
Shakespeare was writing in the time of Queen Elizabeth, who was the granddaughter of Henry Tudor, the man who defeated Richard and became Henry VII. Someone wanting to get on Liz's good side (e.g. an up and coming playwright) would do well to lay it on thick when it came to Richard's villainy.
I don't know enough about Richard to say whether or not Shakespeare did him wrong, but I do think it is absolutely wonderful that there are people so into history that they want to spend time and energy trying to correct the record. And even better, that there is an American Branch carrying on that business on this side of the pond. Hear Hear!
Posted by rickbeyer at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)
May 14, 2007
Mobs
Here's a quote appropriate to the times: "soldiers quartered in a populous town will always occasion two mobs, where they prevent one. They are wretched conservators of the peace!" And what left-wing, namby-pamby, radical liberal peacenick said that? A thoughtful fellow New Englander named John Adams, the second president of the United States. He said it in defense of BRitish soldiers at the Boston Massacre trial in 1770. Some truths are eternal.
Posted by rickbeyer at 02:19 PM | Comments (0)
February 24, 2007
Citing Wikipedia
The February 21st New York Times has an article about how the History Department at Middlebury College has banned citing Wikipedia as a research source. The article went on to offer a balanced and intriguing discussion about the growing debate over how academia should view Wikipedia. For example, on the one hand there is information on Wikipedia that is simply not true. On the other hand, there are professors who assign students to research and write entries on far flung subjects, insuring there will be original information there not available anyplace else.
My own view is that Wikipedia is a good place to start, but not a good place to finish. Or, as Ronald Reagan said, "Trust, but verify."I use it as a place to get a quick read on something, and decide if it is worth following up. I find that proves more useful and accurate every year, although it is a good idea to double check anything found there.
And the founder of Wikipedia makes a good point in the article. It is never a good idea to have an encyclopedia as your main source--good research requires going beyond that.
Posted by rickbeyer at 02:20 AM | Comments (0)
December 30, 2006
Tim Smith's Five Rules of Acting
Tim Smith, the host of our new series of Greatest Stories web videos, said during the shoot: “I should tell you sometime about my five rules of acting, THEY”LL CHANGE YOUR LIFE.” So on the last day I asked him to share, and he did. Now to be honest, I don’t know if these represent a carefully honed philosophy, or something made up on the spot. Either way, I like them, so here they are.
Tim’s 5 Rules of Acting
1) As an actor, you always need to look like there’s something going in your head. So imagine there are centipedes in your brain, and think about what that feels like.2) When you look at somebody, you should imagine there are laser beams going from your eyes to their eyes, and that are earthworms traveling on the laser beams from you to them.
3) Your hands should always be doing something that has nothing to do with what you are saying, or what the action is,
4) Imagine you are dancing on a candy shell underneath which there is a frozen version of hell.
5) Do all of the preceeding 4 at the same time.
Posted by rickbeyer at 08:14 AM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2006
Being There
The big-bellied man with the oxygen tank waiting at the taxi stand the other night threw himself on two live hand grenades at Okinawa, saving the lives of his friends, and incidentally earning the Congressional Medal of Honor. The retired doctor I chatted with in the bookstore earlier this week was wounded five times on Omaha Beach. “You might wonder why someone would be stupid enough to keep fighting when wounded,” he said. “We had no choice.” The economist standing behind me at the cocktail reception last night first learned about market forces while trading cigarettes for rice at a Japanese prison camp. And speaking of Japan, at breakfast this morning I introduced myself to a frail gentleman who, back in the day, piloted one of the fleet of planes that bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941.
The occasion for these various encounters was the World War II Conference held at the National World War II Museum (Formerly the D-Day Museum) in New Orleans. It brought together historians, filmmakers, amateur history enthusiasts, and sizeable number of seemingly ordinary people who, so long ago, had done extraordinary things in the cataclysm that engulfed their world.
Looking at these people—the youngest in their early 80’s—it was impossible not to reflect upon the fact that they soon will be gone. It was quite moving to see the members of this generation—I won’t use the now all too familiar phrase—bearing witness to what they had done, what they had endured, what they had accomplished, knowing that it won't be long before all their voices are stilled forever.
Historians advanced their interpretations, authors signed books, and filmmaker Ken Burns screened excerpts of his new film “The War,” but it was the veterans who were the rock stars here. After describing their experiences from the podium, they were escorted to tables where they could scrawl their signatures and pose for photos, surrounded by a crowd of history groupies eager to connect with the earth changing event that happened long before most of them where born.
Of course, even a detached observer would have to admit that some hero worship might be appropriate.
There were moments of great emotion. Don Malarkey, one of the “Band of Brothers” paratroopers who parachuted into Normandy on D-Day, found himself barely able to speak. “I didn’t realize what a tough venue this would be,” he said, gesturing upward at the C-47 airplane hanging overhead in the museum’s main hall. Once he had leapt from a similar airplane into a night sky filled with death, and the very nearness of the plane made the memories far more vivid than he had anticipated.
There were also moments of unexpected humor. Andy Rooney, a reporter or Stars and Stripes at the time, told of the day in 1945 that he jumped into a ditch to avoid enemy fire, and found that the war correspondent next to him was none other than Ernest Hemingway. "What a way to meet Hemmingway,” said Rooney. “You know, I never liked his writing very much. Too pompous, I thought. But I didn’t mention that to him.”
In it’s review of “Flags of Our Fathers” last month, the New York Times wrote that “It seems hard to believe there is anything left to say about World War II that has not already been stated and restated, chewed, digested and spat out for your consideration.” But World War Two took place on a scale almost beyond imagining, and continues to retain both its mystery and fascination. It is the only war that really spanned the entire globe, destroying an unimaginable 50 million lives, and changing the world map forever. For anyone at this conference with ears to listen, it was clear that there is much about World War II that we can still learn, and much that we can never know.
British author Sir Max Hastings told a story that begins to get at just what makes the experiences of the World War II generation so inspirational. A few years ago he spent hours interviewing death camp survivor Edith Gabon, then living in New York. Afterwards he called a taxi to take him to the airport, where he was trying to make a flight to London. When the taxi didn’t come, he began to get upset. “Relax,” she told him. “When you’ve been in a death camp, you realize that missing an airplane just isn’t very important.”
She was part of a generation forced to throw off the normal human preoccupation with trivia and engage in an elemental life and death struggle. Perhaps any generation would have risen to the challenge—nonetheless, the task fell to this generation, and they were not found wanting.
There were constant reminders as well of those who didn’t survive. “They gave their tomorrows for our today” said one speaker. Another Congressional Medal of Honor winner at Okinawa—there were, unbelievably, 23of them—said that he always felt it was his duty and his honor to represent those who never came back.
The appeal of World War II as an engaging and compelling piece of history will continue for generations hence, but this may be one of the last occasions where so many World War II veterans gather to share their tales in person. I was only one of many people who felt privileged to be there to hear them.
Posted by rickbeyer at 09:54 PM | Comments (1)
October 18, 2006
Fast World
I sold a DAT Player on ebay. The auction was over at 2 PM yesterday afternoon. The confirmed payment showed up in my paypal account within five minutes. I took the player to UPS and shipped it out UPS ground. It arrived at the buyer's house at 7:31 this morning.
Wow!
Posted by rickbeyer at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)
June 29, 2006
Warning: Planet in trouble
News item:
President Bush awoke Monday to find a 100-year-old elm tree lying across the driveway by the North Portico of the White House. Several days of rain in Washington, D.C., had uprooted the tree
My sister sent this cartoon from the June 28 Washington Post.
We saw "An Inconvenient Truth" last night. Very powerful. Hope everyone wakes up to the ugly reality soon.
Posted by rickbeyer at 08:27 AM | Comments (0)
April 17, 2006
Don't fire unless fired upon!
I watched the re-enactment of the Battle of Lexington this morning from the Buckman Tavern. I was in the Tap room when the minuteman ran out of the house. I chatted with “Paul Revere” right until he helped carry John Hancock’s trunk across the Lexington Green to safety. Then it was up to the attic, where we had a great view of the battle. I’m giving tours at the Tavern today from 10-2.
Posted by rickbeyer at 08:01 AM | Comments (0)
March 14, 2006
Audience Feedback
I spoke at the Fenn School the other day. It is a private boy’s school in Concord. I spoke to 8th and 9th graders about history, research, and writing. They were a terrific audience…attentive, well behaved, and full of questions at the end. It was a lot of fun.
Each of the boys had to write a response to the talk, and the school sent me a copy. It's really a pleasure to read unfiltered feedback from people who aren't jus trying to be politce. (They didn't know I would see their comments.) Overall the feedback was quite positive. I was surprised and pleased to find that many of them touched on the writing tips I offered.
Here are a few of my favorite quotes from their comments (which I have to say were quite well written).
“Rick Beyer really changed my view on history. I’m not saying he changed my lifestyle or anything, but the presentation at least tweaked my views a little bit.”
(I wasn’t really trying to change anyone’s lifestyle.)
“There aren’t many people in the world that can get 100, fourteen and fifteen year-old boys to pay undivided attention to them for an hour. Truly, Mr. Beyer is an unbelievable man that will grab the attention of anyone around him when they read, listen, or watch him.”
(The check is in the mail.)
“It was insightful but a little bit boring.”
(Ok, you can’t get reach everybody.)
“He made it on the perfect level for us, not too kiddy so we think he is talking to fourth graders, and not too old so we become board and confused.”
“He made me laugh a lot.”
“He specializes in history, even though he studied a different topic in college.”
(That's OK. Honest.)
“I found The Greatest War Stories Never Told to be well written and I want to purchase it and the other book that he wrote.”
(Yes!)
Posted by rickbeyer at 07:08 PM | Comments (0)
February 27, 2006
Big Brother is Watching
As a person who does frequent research in the National Archives, I was quite flabbergasted to read in the New York Times that the Government is removing from public access thousands of items that have already been declassified, some of which have been available for public review for years. It struck me as Orwellian and symptomatic of the current administration's secrecy mania, which seems to know no bounds. And to compund things, the program itself is consiedered secret, and therefore nobody will talk about it. The article is attached below.
February 21, 2006
U.S. Reclassifies Many Documents in Secret Review
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 — In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.
The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 previously declassified pages began in 1999, when the Central Intelligence Agency and five other agencies objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information after a 1995 declassification order signed by President Bill Clinton. It accelerated after the Bush administration took office and especially after the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to archives records.
But because the reclassification program is itself shrouded in secrecy — governed by a still-classified memorandum that prohibits the National Archives even from saying which agencies are involved — it continued virtually without outside notice until December. That was when an intelligence historian, Matthew M. Aid, noticed that dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been withdrawn from the archives' open shelves.
Mr. Aid was struck by what seemed to him the innocuous contents of the documents — mostly decades-old State Department reports from the Korean War and the early cold war. He found that eight reclassified documents had been previously published in the State Department's history series, "Foreign Relations of the United States."
"The stuff they pulled should never have been removed," he said. "Some of it is mundane, and some of it is outright ridiculous."
After Mr. Aid and other historians complained, the archives' Information Security Oversight Office, which oversees government classification, began an audit of the reclassification program, said J. William Leonard, director of the office.
Mr. Leonard said he ordered the audit after reviewing 16 withdrawn documents and concluding that none should be secret.
"If those sample records were removed because somebody thought they were classified, I'm shocked and disappointed," Mr. Leonard said in an interview. "It just boggles the mind."
If Mr. Leonard finds that documents are being wrongly reclassified, his office could not unilaterally release them. But as the chief adviser to the White House on classification, he could urge a reversal or a revision of the reclassification program.
A group of historians, including representatives of the National Coalition for History and the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations, wrote to Mr. Leonard on Friday to express concern about the reclassification program, which they believe has blocked access to some material at the presidential libraries as well as at the archives.
Among the 50 withdrawn documents that Mr. Aid found in his own files is a 1948 memorandum on a C.I.A. scheme to float balloons over countries behind the Iron Curtain and drop propaganda leaflets. It was reclassified in 2001 even though it had been published by the State Department in 1996.
Another historian, William Burr, found a dozen documents he had copied years ago whose reclassification he considers "silly," including a 1962 telegram from George F. Kennan, then ambassador to Yugoslavia, containing an English translation of a Belgrade newspaper article on China's nuclear weapons program.
Under existing guidelines, government documents are supposed to be declassified after 25 years unless there is particular reason to keep them secret. While some of the choices made by the security reviewers at the archives are baffling, others seem guided by an old bureaucratic reflex: to cover up embarrassments, even if they occurred a half-century ago.
One reclassified document in Mr. Aid's files, for instance, gives the C.I.A.'s assessment on Oct. 12, 1950, that Chinese intervention in the Korean War was "not probable in 1950." Just two weeks later, on Oct. 27, some 300,000 Chinese troops crossed into Korea.
Mr. Aid said he believed that because of the reclassification program, some of the contents of his 22 file cabinets might technically place him in violation of the Espionage Act, a circumstance that could be shared by scores of other historians. But no effort has been made to retrieve copies of reclassified documents, and it is not clear how they all could even be located.
"It doesn't make sense to create a category of documents that are classified but that everyone already has," said Meredith Fuchs, general counsel of the National Security Archive, a research group at George Washington University. "These documents were on open shelves for years."
The group plans to post Mr. Aid's reclassified documents and his account of the secret program on its Web site, www.nsarchive.org, on Tuesday.
The program's critics do not question the notion that wrongly declassified material should be withdrawn. Mr. Aid said he had been dismayed to see "scary" documents in open files at the National Archives, including detailed instructions on the use of high explosives.
But the historians say the program is removing material that can do no conceivable harm to national security. They say it is part of a marked trend toward greater secrecy under the Bush administration, which has increased the pace of classifying documents, slowed declassification and discouraged the release of some material under the Freedom of Information Act.
Experts on government secrecy believe the C.I.A. and other spy agencies, not the White House, are the driving force behind the reclassification program.
"I think it's driven by the individual agencies, which have bureaucratic sensitivities to protect," said Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, editor of the online weekly Secrecy News. "But it was clearly encouraged by the administration's overall embrace of secrecy."
National Archives officials said the program had revoked access to 9,500 documents, more than 8,000 of them since President Bush took office. About 30 reviewers — employees and contractors of the intelligence and defense agencies — are at work each weekday at the archives complex in College Park, Md., the officials said.
Archives officials could not provide a cost for the program but said it was certainly in the millions of dollars, including more than $1 million to build and equip a secure room where the reviewers work.
Michael J. Kurtz, assistant archivist for record services, said the National Archives sought to expand public access to documents whenever possible but had no power over the reclassifications. "The decisions agencies make are those agencies' decisions," Mr. Kurtz said.
Though the National Archives are not allowed to reveal which agencies are involved in the reclassification, one archivist said on condition of anonymity that the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency were major participants.
A spokesman for the C.I.A., Paul Gimigliano, said that the agency had released 26 million pages of documents to the National Archives since 1998 and that it was "committed to the highest quality process" for deciding what should be secret.
"Though the process typically works well, there will always be the anomaly, given the tremendous amount of material and multiple players involved," Mr. Gimigliano said.
A spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency said he was unable to comment on whether his agency was involved in the program.
Anna K. Nelson, a foreign policy historian at American University, said she and other researchers had been puzzled in recent years by the number of documents pulled from the archives with little explanation.
"I think this is a travesty," said Dr. Nelson, who said she believed that some reclassified material was in her files. "I think the public is being deprived of what history is really about: facts."
The document removals have not been reported to the Information Security Oversight Office, as the law has required for formal reclassifications since 2003.
The explanation, said Mr. Leonard, the head of the office, is a bureaucratic quirk. The intelligence agencies take the position that the reclassified documents were never properly declassified, even though they were reviewed, stamped "declassified," freely given to researchers and even published, he said.
Thus, the agencies argue, the documents remain classified — and pulling them from public access is not really reclassification.
Mr. Leonard said he believed that while that logic might seem strained, the agencies were technically correct. But he said the complaints about the secret program, which prompted his decision to conduct an audit, showed that the government's system for deciding what should be secret is deeply flawed.
"This is not a very efficient way of doing business," Mr. Leonard said. "There's got to be a better way."
Posted by rickbeyer at 07:36 AM | Comments (0)
January 06, 2006
Lou Rawls Marriage Advice
I note the passing of Lou Rawls today at age 72, which prompts a memory of a memorable encounter I had with the velvet-throated singer.
It took place on March 12, 1988, at the Marriott Hotel in Omaha, Nebraska. The date is easily fixed because it was the night before the wedding of my friends Henry Florsheim and Doe Cohn. I was Henry’s best man. Many of the guests at the wedding were from out of town, and in place of a bachelor party, I invited all of them, male and female, to a party at the bar of the Marriott. There were had a wild time, drinking and harassing the buttoned-down groom to be. There was a DJ spinning records, and even he got into it. Much to Henry’s discomfort, he began dedicating songs to “My man Shoes” (Shoes being Henry’s nickname).
Some hours into this event, when only a handful of diehards were still engaged in making merry, someone coming back from the bathroom said they had seen Lou Rawls sitting elsewhere in the sprawling bar. Many of us scoffed at this report, refusing to believe that the words Lou Rawls and Omaha, Nebraska could go together. Nevertheless, we sent out a deputation to assert whether there was any truth to this sighting. They returned a short time later saying that not only was Rawls there, but that he had invited the groom over to his booth in order that he might dispense some “wedding advice.”
Henry showed no little alarm at this prospect, but with his reflexes perhaps slowed by the evening’s activities, he was unable to escape his friends, who escorted him over to the booth where Lou Rawls sat with several members of his entourage, having just performed at a Concert at the Askarben Coliseum (that’s Nebraska spelled backwards—swear to GOD). Lou made a space for Henry to sit down beside him, and the rest of us crowded into the booth to hear what he had to say. Asking a few questions, the singer quickly divined that Henry’s nickname was “Shoes.” put his arm around him, and then launched into the following oration, which I reproduce as faithfully as possible, given the fact that nearly 18 years has elapsed since that day.
“Shoes,” he said, in that rich deep voice, “Shoes, I want to tell you how to know when the marriage is in trouble. Now, if you’re in bed with your wife, and you’re making love to her, and she’s eating crackers, that’s not a sign the marriage is in trouble. Even if you are right in the middle of doing it, and she’s reading a book, that’s not a sign the marriage is in trouble. But Shoes, if you are getting it on with her, and she’s just lying there looking up, and right at the moment she says to you ”Honey, I think we should paint the ceiling pink’ that’s when you know the marriage is in trouble.”
Posted by rickbeyer at 02:06 PM | Comments (0)
December 01, 2005
Remembering Ellen Beyer
This is a sad week for the Beyer family.My mom, Ellen Beyer, died on Monday. She was 84. This is a picture of my Mom and me on a happier day. My sister Cathy Hurst wrote a wonderful rememberance of her that appeared in yesterday's Providence Journal, and I reproduce it in full here:
Ellen Beyer's lifelong love of cooking led her to amass a remarkable cookbook collection of nearly 4,000 volumes. And as the wife of Brown University professor Robert Beyer, Ellen applied her college chemistry training, and her interest in good food, to cooking not only for her own family, but also for Brown faculty, Cub Scouts and Brownies, numerous lucky classmates of her children, and generations of foreign students who attended International House potluck luncheons or were invited to her home for Thanksgiving feasts.
Mrs. Beyer died on Monday at Roger Williams Hospital. She was 84.
But her memory lives on in the stories her family and friends have about her cooking. 'I cook like a chemist,' Ellen frequently stated - and to her that meant cooking with discipline. But she also had a flair for meal planning and recipe selection, and her eclectic cooking interests led her to start buying cookbooks. The bulk of her collection is now shelved for future generations of cooks at Johnson & Wales University. 'I've spent 50 years of my life putting this collection together,' said Ellen at the time of her donation. 'I wanted to ensure that my books have a good home and are used as a resource. I know they're in good hands at Johnson & Wales.'
Ellen's cooking took her from a tiny apartment with a shared bath that she lived in as a new bride to the sunny kitchen with stainless steel appliances that was the result of a remodeling at their East Providence home in the 1980s. 'I finally got the kitchen I always wanted!' enthused Ellen.
Ellen was born in 1921 to Richard and Margaret 'Bess' (Logan) Fletcher in New York City, the oldest of three children. She grew up in Floral Park, NY, where she lived until she was married - except for a stint in the 1930s. Her father decided during the Depression to 'go back to the farm', and took his urban family to live in Salisbury, MD for four years, where Ellen gamely worked the land, fed the animals, and helped her mother to can fried chicken. 'I never wanted to touch dirt or eat watermelon again,' she said. Ellen's relationship with her mother was memorialized in a sweet and witty story entitled 'A Plate of Peas' written by her son, Richard, and included in a 2001 anthology of stories edited by Paul Auster. It contained an immortal line of Ellen's: 'You ate them (the peas, that is) for money, you can eat them for love.'
After graduating from Sewanhaka High School in Nassau County, NY, Ellen went on to Hofstra University in Hempstead. Hofstra offered Ellen the opportunity to apply her considerable academic skills (she earned her B.S. there in 1943) and also to meet her future husband when their paths crossed in physics and chemistry classes. Bob graduated first in their class and Ellen second - Ellen said it was because she was having romantic problems that a few Bs were able to slip in among the As in her transcript.
After graduation, Ellen went to work as a chemist at Pfizer until she married Bob on Valentine's Day in 1944. The new bride moved to Ithaca while her husband completed his doctorate, and then to Providence in 1945. As a Brown University faculty wife, Ellen threw her- self into university activities, including active membership in the Ladies of the Faculty.
When the Beyers moved to Riverside in 1950, Ellen joined the League of Women Voters, and also started an active career as a volunteer with Scouting. She also began visiting patients on Sundays at the Hattie Ide Chaffee Home in East Providence, where she was a regular for more than 35 years. When the Beyers moved to East Providence in 1963, Ellen and Bob became communicants at St. Martha's, and Ellen turned her considerable volunteering skills to supporting her new parish.
Ellen was fiercely devoted to her family, and her son Richard recalls a letter she wrote to him when he was having problems in college: 'Mothers are for sharing sorrow as well as joy, failures as well as successes.' She was an equal partner in an amazing, unshakeable marriage - Father Jude McGeough, their pastor at St. Martha's, described the Beyers as 'two hearts beating as one.'
One of the perks of college life was the opportunity for Bob to take several yearlong sabbatical leaves. The Beyers spent sabbaticals in Los Angeles, CA; Stuttgart, Germany; Birmingham, England; Austin, TX; and State College, PA. Each of these was an occasion for Ellen to pack up her home and cart her children off to a new community with new schools, new friends, new grocery stores, and new recipes! Her daughter Catherine particularly remembers the trip to Germany: 'We had 17 pieces of luggage, including cases of formula for my 6-week old sister. It's hard for me to imagine now how any woman with four children including a baby could so calmly board that boat in New York for a year in a foreign country, but she took it all in stride.'
In 1974, Ellen and her daughter Margaret started a tradition of taking each grandchild to Disneyworld when he or she turned six, a tradition Margaret intends to continue with Ellen's youngest granddaughter. 'She had such a fun-loving side,' recalls Margaret. 'She loved to dress in costume at Halloween, and would break out in song at a moment's notice. Two of her favorites were 'Alice Blue Gown' and 'Among My Souvenirs' and we've all learned the words!'
Ellen derived great pleasure from her grandchildren. She was especially supportive of the adoption of two Chinese baby girls by her daughter, Mary. 'We always had all those international students around the table,' recalls Mary. 'That really planted the seed in me that ultimately blossomed in my making the choice to pursue a Chinese adoption.'
Mrs. Beyer leaves her husband, Robert; four children: Catherine Beyer Hurst of Cambridge, MA; Margaret Beyer of Rockville, MD; Richad Beyer of Lexington, MA; and Mary Beyer Trotter of Olympia, WA; and seven grandchildren: Brian and Timothy Hurst; Roberta and Andrew Beyer; and Julie, Rachel, and Faith Trotter.
Her funeral will be held Friday at 9 AM from the PERRY-McSTAY FUNERAL HOME, 2555 Pawtucket Avenue, East Providence, followed by a Mass of Christian Burial at 10 AM in St. Sebastian's Church, Cole Avenue, Providence. Burial will be in Gate of Heaven Cemetery, East Providence. Calling hours Thursday 5-8 p.m. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to International House, 8 Stimson Avenue, Providence, 02906 or Hallworth House, 66 Benefit Street, Providence, 02904.
Posted by rickbeyer at 07:59 AM | Comments (0)
July 20, 2005
A Morning Observation
It is amazing the amount of hope, optimism, good cheer, vibrancy, and all-over life affirming force contained in a single cup of hot water strained over a fistfull of ground up coffee beans.
Posted by rickbeyer at 07:59 AM | Comments (0)