Dr. Norman C. Beamish

On January 25th, 2018 my father passed away at 87 years old. My dad was many things: husband, friend, teacher, intellectual of sorts, fisherman, sports spectator, camper, but most of all he was a father and grandfather.

The things that I treasured the most was his love of family and his sense of humor.  My Dad loved having any of us around and would drive any distance to see us.  For my entire adult life, he was fun – enjoyable to be around and never dull.  He lived for a good time and he made all of our friends, and our kid’s friends, always feel welcome and completely at ease.

As he aged, it became clear that he was a miracle of medical science.  He lived 87 relatively healthy years in spite of smoking, drinking, and over-eating with virtually no exercise.  He put 250K off-road miles on a body designed for 150K street miles.  I speak for all of his descendants when I say ”I’ll keep them genes”.

He was born and raised in Fredonia, NY and did not have an easy childhood.  My grandmother was tough, demanding, and not a particularly happy person. He grew up in an era and in an area where few went to college.  But he had a talent – music – and he was an exceptional trumpet player.  He was encouraged to pursue a career as a manager at the grape juice factory up the street when he graduated from high school, but he wanted to go to the Fredonia State Teachers College to teach music and as a way to escape Fredonia. He was determined to make something of himself and ultimately adopted a lifestyle that was completely different than the environment he was raised in.

When he graduated from college, he moved around and taught – first on Long Island and then on to Lockport, New York where he met and married my mother, Mary Anne Dates.  They settled in Lockport and he started up the music program in a new school system – Niagara-Wheatfield.  In the middle of all that he was drafted and served two years on the US Army in the period between the Korean and Vietnam wars.

My dad was intensely committed to his profession and the pursuit of excellence.  He built the Niagara-Wheatfield program from nothing into a powerhouse.  As the music department chairman he sought and hired immensely talented teachers who in turn developed hundreds of talented musicians, many of whom went onto their own careers in music.  Year after year Niagara-Wheatfield musicians dominated the All-county and All-state band selections and he became something of a legend in the NY State music education system.

Norman spent more than a decade going to night school starting in the late 60’s culminating with his Doctorate in the 1979.  Shortly thereafter, he took on a new challenge in Auburn, NY.  This was an opportunity to take a program in bad shape and turn it around for a community that desperately wanted success.  And turn it around, he did.  He ran the same playbook he did in Niagara-Wheatfield:  get the community involved, get the administration on board, hire the very best people, set the bar high and work your butt off.  The program achieved the same high level of success that the Niagara Wheatfield program did and developed several extraordinary music teachers and directors.

However, the bigger part of his success story was the influence he had on the lives of the people he worked with – the students, the faculty, and the parents.  We would regularly run into former students in almost any place or city.  For example, when I was in college in 1978, I was driving home from UB after pulling an all-nighter and side-swiped a truck causing some damage.  I called my Dad to help sort out the insurance.  When he arrived on the scene, the truck driver instantly recognized my dad as a former teacher and dismissed us with a “don’t worry about the damage – I’ll take care of it”.  More recently, it was fitting that one of his Hospice nurses was a former student – he taught her to play French Horn.  In addition to random meetings, he regularly received visits, letters, and calls from former students and colleagues, many of whom went on to do wonderful things in music.  Not all of his of his students went on to musical greatness, but many had their lives impacted by participating in something where hard work and pursuit of excellence paid off in success – lessons that served them well for the rest of  their personal and professional lives.

He had high expectations for my brother, sister, and I.  It was always a forgone conclusion that we would go to college and earn degrees.  Anything else never occurred to us.  Of course, he would have preferred that we’d all be in music.  My sister and I didn’t have the necessary talent and had abilities in other areas.  I played the trumpet until my graduation from high school. During that time I’d usually practice in the basement.  It was normal for there to be a foot stomping on the floor above me, followed by something like “B flat dammit !”. By the time I was about 16 I saw a better future in engineering.  However, my brother had some “music chops” and has had a very successful teaching career.  Steve’s job provided endless discussion on the New York State public music education scene with my dad.  In Dad’s later years, those discussions took on a “did I ever tell you about …” flavor that cleared the room faster than you could say “about thousand times”.  In addition to dialogs with Steve, he was always genuinely interested in jobs of Susie and I.  He would initiate discussions that would sometimes consume hours on Eel Bay.

Eel Bay is the body of water that our “family compound of cottages” is on.  Dad and my Mom were our “real estate partners” when we bought our place in the Thousand Islands more than 30 years ago.  This was the place where our extended family has spent much of our spring, summer, and fall leisure time over the past 3 decades.  Dad loved this place, not just for its beauty, because it is where the family meets and plays.  He spent so many happy times there and always tried to make our lives better when we arrived.  The place was always in tip-top shape, the lawn mowed, and cottages painted in the years he was physically able.  In the last decade, as his eyesight and legs failed him, he still wanted to contribute in the worse possible way.  He would find things to do that he felt would “help the cause”. This included weeding the woods, trimming the shrubs, and painting. The results were often comical: he would remove all the poison ivy with his bare hands, cut down shrubs we liked, change our picnic table from a redwood color to some florescent green he got a deal on from the hardware store.  We played a cat and mouse game with his hedge trimmers – trying to stay one step ahead of his search.  We needled him relentlessly about all this and naturally, he took it well and laughed at himself.

Dad was competitive and a game player.  Although he was not a “poor loser” he always played to win.  He would never slack off to give someone else a chance and was very unhappy if someone didn’t give their best against him.  This was true if you were playing Pinochle or baseball. One memorable example of this was illustrated at dinner one night when we were in our high school years.  My parent, siblings, and I were eating dinner in our little kitchen in North Tonawanda and my Dad went for an extra portion something fattening.  My Mom interrupted the conversation to say “Norman, you’re going to get fatter eating like that”.  My Dad came back with “oh yeah, I bet I can fit into your pants and you can’t fit into mine”.  Next thing we know my parents have both stripped down to their underwear and are trying to pull each other’s pants on. I was reasonably sure that this didn’t happen at my friend’s dinner tables. That episode aside, my Dad’s passion to give his best drove his career and provided him with great joy in his leisure time. His competitiveness and drive ultimately rubbed off enough on my siblings and I, and helped us be successful in our own careers.

In addition to teaching, my dad was an active musician until after he retired.  He played trumpet and was the alternate conductor for the Post 264 Legion Band out of Tonawanda for the better part of two decades.  This was an excellent amateur concert and parade band that regularly came in the top two in the annual national Legion band competition.  As I grew up, we regularly attended concerts and parades – it seemed like every weekend in the summer.  I have vivid memories of standing in the hot sun watching parades and hanging around the beer tent after it was over.  It always seemed like an eternity as the band members drank Genesee and sung songs like “I want a girl just like the girl that married dear of dad”.  This had such an impression on me that I never took my kids to ANY parades or band concerts. He also played in small bands and big bands for weddings and other events – back when people listened and danced to live music.

My dad was something of an intellectual.  He was very well read in both non-fiction and fiction.  He read books and articles on a wide variety of topics including education, politics, wars, and the evolution of society. He was a registered Democrat but had a complex mix of liberal and conservative views that evolved and changed over his life.  He truly LOVED debates and discussions – the more spirited the better.  For 30 years, he would frequently start these about half way through our daily Happy Hour in the Islands.  They would often get extremely animated and go on for hours. When the conversation wasn’t spicy enough for his liking he would take the opposing view, even if he didn’t really believe it. Over time, there were a few topics that had predictable outcomes, such as education, but he could usually provoke someone into a rip-roaring debate nonetheless.   We were all vulnerable to getting “sucked into” the topic of the day and occasionally lost control of our emotions, but we had many thought-provoking discussions that helped us gain perspective, develop our “world vision”, and just have fun.

Norman was completely useless in the shop or anything remotely domestic, save washing dishes.  However, it never stopped him from offering to help. He would dutifully take orders like “hammer in these nails in all the holes I drilled”.  The results weren’t guaranteed, but when you asked him to redo it, he didn’t take offense and went back to work.  One of his most uttered phrases was “can I help ?”.

To sum it up, my father was a great man and a great father. He overcame a difficult upbringing in a village trapped in time to make something of himself.  He looked beyond what was offered to him and sought out new experiences and challenges.  However, what made him special was his love of family and friends, his optimistic spirit, his unwavering support, and his ability to have a good time.  We all loved him and will miss him terribly.  That said, we all had the ultimate good fortune to know him, be surrounded by him, and been the beneficiaries of his love and good will. Well done, Dad. Rest in peace.