Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-m8s7h Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-19T14:22:25.150Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Walter Eggert Beach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2007

Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

With Walter Beach's passing in November 2006, a host of communities lost a valued and dedicated friend. When Walter was presented APSA's Frank J. Goodnow Award in 1998 for his sustained contributions to the discipline, if his political science colleagues who knew him less well were enormously impressed by the vast extent of his civic engagements, they had to be mind-boggled by the depth of his contributions. These contributions went far beyond his 15-year service to APSA as staff associate, director of the Congressional Fellowship Program, and, finally, assistant director; they also included his 10-year engagement at the Brookings Institution, and his 16-year engagement with Heldref Publications and the Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation. It was as if Walter never met a worthy endeavor for which he would not become a benefactor—from his life-long commitment to his 1956 alma mater Dickinson College (along with brother Alan, 1955) from which he was given the Distinguished Alumni Award in 1992, to his service as trustee of the Hillwood Museum and Gardens Foundation, to his directorship of the International Eye Foundation, to his endowment of the National Capital Area Political Science Association, to his vigorous support of the Southern Political Science Association, to his service on the board of the Washington Center for Internships, to his fundraising prowess for George Washington University's Gelman Library and Mount Vernon College, among others. These will be the focus of a fuller tribute to be published in the April 2006 issue of PS: Political Science and Politics.

Type
IN MEMORIAM
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , January 2007 , pp. 163
Copyright
© 2007 The American Political Science Association

With Walter Beach's passing in November 2006, a host of communities lost a valued and dedicated friend. When Walter was presented APSA's Frank J. Goodnow Award in 1998 for his sustained contributions to the discipline, if his political science colleagues who knew him less well were enormously impressed by the vast extent of his civic engagements, they had to be mind-boggled by the depth of his contributions. These contributions went far beyond his 15-year service to APSA as staff associate, director of the Congressional Fellowship Program, and, finally, assistant director; they also included his 10-year engagement at the Brookings Institution, and his 16-year engagement with Heldref Publications and the Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation. It was as if Walter never met a worthy endeavor for which he would not become a benefactor—from his life-long commitment to his 1956 alma mater Dickinson College (along with brother Alan, 1955) from which he was given the Distinguished Alumni Award in 1992, to his service as trustee of the Hillwood Museum and Gardens Foundation, to his directorship of the International Eye Foundation, to his endowment of the National Capital Area Political Science Association, to his vigorous support of the Southern Political Science Association, to his service on the board of the Washington Center for Internships, to his fundraising prowess for George Washington University's Gelman Library and Mount Vernon College, among others. These will be the focus of a fuller tribute to be published in the April 2006 issue of PS: Political Science and Politics.

For now, the staff of APSA want to pay tribute to a tireless and loving friend who set the benchmark for what it is to be a colleague. Even if simply delivering a message at our 1527 New Hampshire Avenue offices, Walter could not escape the building in less than an hour because he would stop to chat with each employee, or we with him. Few of us have not received periodic news clippings reminding us of all-but-forgotten members of the political science community that we serve. There was no aspect of our efforts for which he did not have a kind word and helpful contribution. Walter Beach represented the true definition of sui generis—he constituted a class alone.