August 29 , 2004 Thomas C. Beadel

Following a long battle with cancer, our classmate Thomas C. Beadel died Aug. 29 in Syracuse, N.Y. His wife of 40 years, Caryl, said he had taken a great many books from  their home in Santa Barbara to their beloved vacation home in the Thousand Islands and managed to read them all before his condition grew critical.

Our classmate, Jack Patterson, said a splendid memorial service was held in Clayton, N.Y., at which Tom's humor and other virtues were the subject of much appreciation. It was attended by more than 150 persons, and among the classmates there besides Jack were Urban Hirschey, Dick Foley, Don Sheffield and Phil Kron.

"Tom was strongly a dreamer in some ways, but certainly one who followed up on the dreams," Jack recalled, telling how he began his career "at the bottom," as he liked, repossessing cars in seedy sections of Los Angeles, then traveled alone around the world before taking the reins of the family jewelry business, Keepsake Diamond Rings

He built on his family's success, and upon selling out, was able to move to California with what he described as "a liquid million dollars." But financial reverses soon forced him back into the jewelry business, where he peddled pearls to mom and pop jewelers, building a second fortune. It took a great deal to throw him for a loop..

Often self-deprecating, Tom was prone to be very modest about his own accomplishments. Writing in our class publication, "More Musings," four years ago, he concluded memorably:

"When I face my own imminent demise (to his surprise, it was not so imminent), "I naturally take stock. Have I contributed? Have I left the world a better place? The answer in my case is a resounding NO! And once I realized that sad fact, all the things my mother taught me, and all the nice liberal things Dartmouth College tried to inculcate kind of fizzled. That's a hell of a heavy load to have off of my shoulders--whew! I think I'm going to enjoy the rest of my life immensely."

But, his wife told me a story that shows that Tom did leave the world a better place. A few years ago, she said, he told a jeweler who was a customer of his in Gastonia, N.C., and who suffered from alcoholism, that he would buy him out, and, then, if he quit drinking, he would sell him back his place for half the price. When the customer succeeded in arighting himself, Tom quickly kept the bargain.

Dick Foley, like Jack Patterson, was much impressed by the memorial. "It was a beautiful day in all respects, one that Tom would have enjoyed," he wrote me. "As often repeated in the conversations amongst his friends and family following the service, he was a prince of a guy, a wonderful friend, much loved, and sorely missed."

Besides his wife, Tom is survived by his son, Robert, Dartmouth '89.

Ken Reich