Remarks by President William G. Durden '71

Memorial service for Walter E. Beach '56
Saturday, Nov. 25, 2006
Cosmos Club, Washington, D.C.

We gather this afternoon to honor the memory of one of the most remarkable individuals we will ever know – Walter Eggert Beach . Each of us in this room has been given an extraordinary gift—the opportunity to be a part of Walter's vast network of friends. Throughout the course of his life, Walter persistently fostered an amazingly broad and varied array of connections—historical and contemporary—that wove together for the benefit of us all his passion for his undergraduate alma mater, Dickinson College; a long-standing commitment to his and Allen's fraternity, Kappa Sigma; his insatiable love of politics and history in Washington DC; his loyalty to his beloved—though sometimes troubling—Redskins; and his dedication to the International Eye Foundation, the Hillwood Museum and Gardens, Mt. Vernon College, and, of course, the Cosmos Club.

Walter selected his commitments carefully and worked for them with a focus and tenacity that inspired us all. Dickinson College was one of the lucky recipients of Walter's zeal. By a fluke of fate, Walter and his brother, Allen, elected to come to Dickinson College in the mid-1950s after their father took them on a whirlwind tour of colleges across Pennsylvania. Walter's love of Dickinson, however, was immediate and, more importantly, unique in its depth, scope and duration.

Walter truly grasped the significance of Dickinson's long, rich history. Even as a student, he became enthralled and extremely knowledgeable about those individuals who figured so prominently in Dickinson's past—our founder, Dr. Benjamin Rush; our namesake, John Dickinson; the outspoken abolitionist and freethinker, Moncure Conway, Dickinson Class of 1849; and Joseph Priestley, the discover of oxygen whose scientific instruments reside today in the Dickinson College Archives. Priestley, by the way, was a close friend of Dickinson's first science professor, the outspoken deist, Thomas Cooper, whom Thomas Jefferson wanted for the first professor of his university, but who was rejected as too radical by its Board of Overseers. Walter was absolutely tickled that Dickinson was more bold that UVA in its hiring of professors at that time! You know, in that last thread of association from Priestley to Cooper to Jefferson, I'm even beginning to sound like Walter. What a delightful thought!

Walter also immersed himself in the biographies of Dickinson's most infamous graduates, President James Buchanan and Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney—although he would always reference them with a characteristic aside—his classic gesture of adding a footnote—noting their significant legal and political shortcomings.

What made Walter's passion for Dickinson's history so unusual was the way he embraced and acted upon it. With remarkable aplomb and not inconsiderable enthusiasm, Walter began to correspond freely and frequently with Dickinson's presidents shortly after graduation to inform them of his pilgrimages to the home of Joseph Priestley, to contribute to the cost of restoring Priestley's barrel organ and piano and to secure a portrait of Moncure Conway and a bust of Justice Taney. It was in 1961, moreover, just five years after he graduated, that Walter wrote to President Red Malcolm first raising the possibility of bringing a Washington DC statue of Benjamin Rush to campus—a dream that was finally fulfilled in a most creative manner over forty years later in 2004.

But Walter's interest in Dickinson was not confined to the past. He understood that it was just as important to nurture current connections that would, in turn, be essential for Dickinson's future. And connect he did! I am sure we were not alone in the President's Office at Dickinson when we used to speculate that Walter single-handedly kept the US Postal Service in the black. And that was before he discovered the power and ease of email!

Promising to raise Dickinson in conversation at least three times a day, Walter's indefatigable energy led him to find Dickinsonians or Dickinson-related individuals in every imaginable place. Newspaper society pages were a favorite source, especially those in the New York Times . In a response to an email inquiry from me regarding a mention of John Dickinson in the New York Times on an early Sunday afternoon in November 2002, Walter responded:

Bill, I am impressed that already you have gotten to the Arts and Leisure section of the Sunday New York Times . It is usually Tuesday before I get to that section. I have, however, already read the Style section and did not find any Dickinson-related marriages to send along to you this week.

Newspaper articles would also spark or rekindle existing relationships, such as the one Walter nurtured and developed with the grandnieces of Moncure Conway. In 1999, Walter wrote to his good friend and college archivist, Jim Gerenscer,

The home of Moncure Conway near Fredericksberg has been restored and was featured in a story in the Washington Times . Conway's two grandnieces would like that. One, Connie Keve, gave us the Conway portrait. The other, Katherine, has now written to me the address of the man who has restored the house. I plan to write him and send him my old article on Conway and Dickinson College and invite him to see our Conway Collection. It is a good way to promote Dickinson College. You are correct to seek to find ways to get people involved as that does develop interest. We are in agreement on that. Now, I have to water my garden.

And, then of course, there was television—and particularly C-Span. Emailing fellow trustee Woody Goldberg in September 2004, Walter wrote:

Woody, up late watching US Senate Armed Service Committee hearing on C-Span. Included your friend Senator Jack Reed whom you had for dinner with a group of Dickinsonians recently and who was so impressive. Also tonight with Secretary Rumsfeld was Admiral Tom Fargo for the Pacific Command who so helped us with the Dr. Rush statue. And there was a reference to General Petraeus (whose wife and daughter are Dickinsonians). So Dickinson-related people are front and center when national security issues are under discussion.

One cannot remember Walter without commenting upon his extraordinary civility and gallantry. Always a quintessential gentleman and superb conversationalist, Walter did his homework as he sought ways to enliven his encounters with prospective dinner guests and, not coincidentally, mention Dickinson in the process. In preparation for meeting Shirley Tilghman, President of Princeton and Dickinson's commencement speaker in 2002, Walter wrote again to Woody, who was then serving as chair of the Honorary Degree Committee:

I was delighted to read that our speaker this year from Princeton will note that John Dickinson got an honorary degree from Princeton (and that Princeton is Dickinson's historic sister college). As one thinks about it, perhaps the old Princetonian, Dr. Rush, arranged this as one of his acts of support for is fellow founding father. I checked and see Dickinson did not give honorary degrees to either Benjamin Rush or his son, Secretary of State, Richard Rush, like father a Princetonian and Dickinson trustee. I am sorry about that. . . . For conversation with Princeton president, I wonder if there are other links to Dickinson/Princeton. I know Neil Weissman (Dickinson's current provost) is one of the orange hood. So maybe he would know.

It was, however, the way that Walter made the passions of his life intersect for the mutual benefit of us all that made him so remarkable. I could not count, for example, the number of commencement speakers, honorary degree recipients and guest lecturers who have come to Dickinson over the past 50 years because of Walter's connections. Just last year, for example, we bestowed an honorary degree upon Jerome Mendouga, the Cameroonian Ambassador to the United States, whom Walter knew through his long years of work with the International Eye Foundation. As a founding member and director of The Washington Center, Walter also helped to provide scores of Dickinson students with the opportunity to intern in Washington and discover “life inside the beltway.” And I would be remiss if I did not mention that Walter always looked for an opportunity to bring his Washington DC friends to Dickinson's campus in Carlisle, truly believing their lives would be incomplete without a visit to “one of the most beautiful campuses in America.”

Walter even found a way to weave his German heritage into a most profound and touching connection to Dickinson College. Allow me to read an excerpt from one more email—this one sent to our college archivist in December of 2000—that, I believe, captures Walter's lively mind, his energy and his dedication. He begins by commenting on the College's effort to secure a postal stamp:

I have read in recent years that printed post cards have been the way the Postal Commission has recognized colleges and universities. My mother collected stamps, including a collection on colleges and universities. I will try and Xerox the collection and send to you as you work on this matter. Do try. An important stamp in my mother's collection was for the 500 th anniversary of the University of Greifswald, in Germany on the Baltic Sea. It is important as her ancestor, Johannes von Usedom, was rector of the University in 1545 and I have his portrait in my dining room. By the way, my brother and I sold almost all of my mother's stamp collection two years ago and have given money for a fund in mother's honor at Dickinson—the Liselotte von Usedom Beach Scholarship Fund, which is set and still growing with further annual contributions. It will help German major students. Mother loved Dickinson College so this is a nice memorial for her.

I apologize for not doing more of late in a timely way. I get so busy with so much, Southern Political Science Association, Cosmos Club (three committees), Washington Center (we have a number of Dickinson students on the program here), the Hillwood Museum, International Eye Foundation

Of course, I am trying to work hard for good old Dickinson College and was so sorry not to get over to see you and the Library during my Board of Trustees visit in October. Bill Durden makes me work too hard at this and that meeting (smile).

Just keep after me if I fail to keep up. Now I will go for my needed nightly walk, a bit late, but I feel better I am trying to be up to speed with your important work—the Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections.

Today, as we gather to bid farewell to our amazing friend who, in fact, requested that memorial contributions be directed to his beloved library, I must quote Dickinson's former librarian and official historian, Charles Coleman Sellers, who wrote to Walter in 1965, “Stay with us! You are building up a far-flung structure of friendly interest in Dickinson College in a way that no one else here has time or, I really believe, could do!”

How right he was! Walter spent over 50 years building an extraordinary labyrinth of friends, connections and good will that are beyond exemplary. His network and all that it represents are his greatest legacy and our greatest gift to him will be the part we play in sustaining it.

All of us gathered here today are the better for knowing Walter. The quintessential gentleman—gracious, generous, accommodating and unassuming, the person of infinite curiosity about all things political, historical, or in any way related to Washington D.C., the joyous engager of life and its people. Collector of those small moments of delight that seem to most people so insignificant but, in fact, cumulatively build the corpus of a durable existence—for Walter—his garden and its blooming flowers, his home and the man family artifacts and their generational associations, a chance Redskins' or Nationals' victory, an unanticipated meeting with or article discovered about someone associated with Dickinson College, Mt. Vernon College, the Cosmos Club, the Eye Foundation or the northern German island of Usedom. Walter was the ultimate Washingtonian—the tireless, discrete networker making so effortlessly those connections among disparate people that invest life with interest and enjoyment.

What I describe today, of course, is only a part of Walter. The whole eludes description in but the few minutes we have this afternoon. But what we can grasp and celebrate reminds us all vividly that he was one of a kind and will be deeply missed by us in person and by those he would have brought together in the future. But then again, it is time for Walter to step away and, we trust, metaphorically, finally “water his garden,” having been “busy with so much for so long.”

CONFERRING OF THE HONORARY DEGREE

Before we conclude Dickinson's portion of this tribute, we have one more very important honor to bestow upon Walter Beach. Just a few short weeks ago, on October 28 th , the Dickinson College Board of Trustees voted to give Walter an honorary doctorate of public service, a motion the faculty enthusiastically affirmed at their meeting on November 6 th . I had planned to deliver the news of the nomination personally to Walter last Sunday, a visit which, unfortunately never took place.

We felt, however, that it would be appropriate to bestow this high honor today as part of this celebration of Walter's life. I'd like to ask his brothers, Allen and Arthur, former Dickinson President Lee Fritschler; Chairman of the Dickinson Board of Trustees, John Curley, Class of 1960; fellow trustee, Woody Goldberg, Class of 1963; and Provost Neil Weissman who will now come forward and read the citation.

Honorary Doctor of Public Service Citation

Proclamation

Walter E. Beach, upon the recommendation of the Faculty to the Board of Trustees, and by its mandamus, I confer upon you the Doctor of Public Service, with the rights, privileges and distinction thereunto appertaining, in token of which I present you with this diploma and cause you to be invested with the hood of Dickinson College appropriate to your degree.

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