You Knew This Was Going to Happen…

As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end.

As much as we have spent the last several months cheering on Samuel Bean after he saw his boyhood dreams turn from bright and promising to silent and dark and then, thankfully, back again—at least in spirit—we’ve come to the end of Sam’s timeline. Not that that means we won’t review any more information on his story, but for now, we’ve got to bid a remarkable man adieu.

How Sam’s story came to its end, I don’t really know. He was long gone before I ever showed up on the scene. All I knew of him at the start was from what family members told me—and, understandably, no one likes to talk about death or dying.

That doesn’t mean I never took the opportunity to search online for what information I could find. Of course you know I would do that!

What I found amazing, though, was the lack of any final stories on Sam in the very newspaper which had spent over three decades breathlessly broadcasting every tidbit of Sam’s life that could be printed.

Perhaps this lack of remembrance was owing to a glitch in online archives of the Oakland Tribune. I’ll be circumspect and give them the benefit of the doubt. Up to this point, I’m struggling to find any mention of Sam’s passing in his local newspaper.

Back in his hometown, though, the small newspaper there got the scoop on the mighty Trib. Maybe it was their turn to go all breathless. After all, this was their boy they were talking about—born and raised in San Mateo County…well, and just across the county line in Palo Alto in those fateful early teen years.

Whether the San Mateo Times was able to resist the urge to employ hyperbole, I’m not sure. The editorial tone seemed to convey pride in their hometown boy. A few of the details on Sam’s life seem to fall neatly into place. Others, though—well, let’s just say, “That’s news to me.”

            Funeral services for Samuel Bean, 57, a native of Redwood City and a world-famous chess champion, were held today at the Fowler-Anderson funeral home chapel in Alameda. Interment was at Mountain View cemetery.

            Bean, a resident of 1807 Santa Clara avenue, Alameda, died Saturday in Merritt hospital, Oakland. He lost his sight and hearing when he was 13, yet became an accomplished chess player. At the time of his death he was carrying on 13 games by mail. He missed out on the world chess championship for the blind by only two victories during his prime. He was a salesman for products made by the California Industries of the Blind in Oakland.

Saying “I Do” Again

I was looking for something else when I found it, so I resisted the urge to veer off on that rabbit trail and stuck to the moment’s mission. When I went back to recreate the search, it was gone.

I know I saw it.

Well, at least I thought I saw it.

I had found what I thought was documentation of a second marriage for Samuel W. Bean in Alameda County, California. Of course, I saw it before all the big changes at FamilySearch.org. And, of course, I didn't write anything down.

Now, things are so different. It almost seems like they’ve installed a Google-esque algorithm, anticipating a visitor’s search terms based on previous searches. Now, no matter what I do to create a search on Sam and his mystery companion, all FamilySearch will serve up are results for marriages in Nevada. How did I get that far afield of my stated search request?

Though I’ve reconstructed my path—admittedly in the newly-revised FamilySearch site—I cannot replicate the result that told me that, sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s, widower Samuel Bean got married a second time.

The family had never mentioned such an event to me, those many years ago when I knew Sam’s grandchildren, daughter-in-law and even his twin brother and sister. But surprises do pop up occasionally when we pursue family history via documentation. Not to mention, Sam could definitely be a lady’s man, judging from the newspaper article regarding his suave moves on the dance floor—and echoed in his twin’s equally adroit approach to social matters.

Thinking perhaps I had seen the proof of the matter on another website, I desperately scrutinized all the usual haunts: Ancestry.com, NewspaperArchive.com, even Rootsweb.com. Over and over again. I went back to FamilySearch and headed for the geographic listing of resources, thinking I’d find it tucked away in one of the as-yet-un-indexed volumes. No luck.

Bad technology day? Trespass into some time warp? Hallucination?

Perhaps it’s time to take a break from genealogy research (my feverish response: No! No! No!).

Wait…before they call in the nice young men in their clean white coats to take me away…I just need to tell you…

I know she was there. I saw it.

Her name was Hazel.

Saying “I Do”

Somewhere in the midst of Samuel Bean’s winning streak in the local chess tournament scene, his younger son was embarking on a winning streak of his own. Now safely back across the Pacific and honorably discharged from the Marine Corps after the war in 1946, Earle Raymond Bean had made his way back home to Alameda, California. Some time after that point, he made the acquaintance of a young lady from Southern California by name Marilyn Sowle.

How Earle and Marilyn met, I have no idea. Though she was born in Wisconsin, Marilyn was living with her parents, David and Olive Brague Sowle, in the southern California city of Anaheim by the time of the 1940 census—though she was hard to find, courtesy of a census worker who evidently heard her name as “Maryland.”

Some time after that point, Marilyn’s parents divorced, her mother remarried and moved up to northern California. Though Marilyn favored her father and remained in the Los Angeles area through her high school years, perhaps it was on a visit with her mother in the north that she may have had opportunity to meet Sam’s son.

I can only guess, though. Despite the many opportunities I had in the past to ask, I never did hear the story of how they met.

Worse, I still can’t find any record of her marriage to Earle Raymond Bean—or Earl Ray, or whatever other version of his name might have been used. It could have been a small ceremony in Alameda. Or Los Angeles. Or anywhere in between. Who knows; maybe they made a run for Reno. The maddening thing is that there is absolutely no mention of them in FamilySearch.org’s index of California marriage records up through 1952.

Why would I suspect a limit of 1952? Because by March of 1951, they were already the proud parents of a firstborn son.

Sam’s first grandchild had made his appearance.

More Chess

Moving into yet another decade, Samuel Bean gains his competitive edge, despite his double challenge of being both blind and deaf.

The East Bay metropolitan area finds itself boasting the possibility of a new chess champion, as Sam outpaces the defending champion, a student at the University of California at Berkeley.

Still living at the same address—though his mother, Ella Shields Bean, is by now no longer with him there—Sam is now fifty four years of age. Just moving into his prime, he surely must have thought as he pulled within grasp of first place in yet another chess tournament.

Perhaps a bit prematurely for the scoop on the end result, the Oakland Tribune moves in to report Sam's progress in a brief announcement on May 10, 1950:

            Sam Bean, a blind and deaf salesman of 1807 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda, is one of the leading contenders in the 1950 chess tournament of the Oakland Chess and Checker Club, club officials announced today.

            Bean has played ten games with eight wins and two draws. Larry Ledgerwood, University of California geology student and defending champion, has won four games, lost one and had two draws.

Another Loss For Sam

Despite Samuel Bean’s rising star in the Bay Area’s world of chess tournaments, all his success in business, personal life and even positive attitude couldn’t protect him from suffering any more losses.

Ella May Shields Bean, Sam’s perseverant and ever-attentive mother who had seen him through every possible life challenge, was now eighty three years of age.

It was only a matter of a few months after the wonderful article on Sam’s life that he had to face the inevitable. After an “extended illness” that eventually landed her in a local hospital, Ella Bean passed away on November 1, 1948.

I can only begin to imagine what a sea change that must have been in the life of the blind and deaf man for whom she had been such a powerful mainstay.

            Alameda, Nov. 3.—Funeral services were held today for Mrs. Ella May Bean, 83, who died Monday at a local hospital after an extended illness. A native of Illinois, she lived in Alameda 35 years. The family home is at 1807 Santa Clara Avenue.

            Surviving are three children, William S. Bean, Alameda automobile dealer; Samuel W. Bean and Mrs. Leona Grant, Alameda; and two sisters, Mrs. Flora Montague, Fresno, and Mrs. Lillie Taylor, Rodeo. There are two grandchildren, Earl R., and Samuel W. Bean Jr.

            Services were conducted at 2:30 p.m., at the Fowler-Anderson Mortuary, 2244 Santa Clara Avenue, by the Rev. John W. Glasse, Presbyterian minister. Interment was at Mountain View Crematorium.

“A Swell Wife”

It is sometimes interesting, in having reviewed a man’s life, to go back and take a look at it in retrospect—from the eyes of the subject, himself.

In the case of Samuel Bean, the Oakland Tribune feature gives us that opportunity. Written in 1948, when Sam had turned fifty two, the Hayes article provides a glimpse into Sam’s life as a review. Keeping in mind—as we’ve seen countless times in the case of other newspapers—that the reporter might have gotten the story wrong, we could just chalk up any errors or revisions to editorial negligence. However, in this case, I think some of the discrepancies we are about to review are more telling about Sam’s stage in life than the reporter’s prowess in getting the story right.

Like rehearsing a litany, Sam got the tale of his injury down pat—though we’ve certainly read different versions over the last several years of newspaper records.

“I was watching some boys on a Palo Alto playground when I was 13. One of the boys picked up a rock and threw it, only playing. It hit me in the head, caused intense inflammation and destroyed the optic and auditory nerves.”

Likewise, Sam’s take on his early years after the injury was straightforward:

Bean is the son of a former Palo Alto contractor and builder. After his accident his mother brought him to Alameda and he became a student at the California School for the Blind in Berkeley.

After that section of the article, Sam seems to stray from what we’ve already learned as the orthodoxy of his personal history. I can’t help but wonder what those discrepancies might be attributed to. What was he thinking? What caused him to remember some details so clearly, while others only incompletely?

Take Sam’s teacher at the California School for the Deaf and Blind. Her philosophy evidently was firmly imprinted on Sam’s mind—he was a dutiful disciple of her progressive views on the handicapped in society. One could almost say she made the man.

And yet, he couldn’t fully remember her name. Admittedly, the reporter inadvertently could have slipped the last portion of her name from the final copy. I wonder, though: could it have been Sam who didn’t fully remember Mary White Eastman?

“I had a wonderful teacher, Miss Mary White. She was blind herself,” Bean said. “She taught me that a handicap is a handicap only in the degree in which you allow it to master you.”

It was from this article that I first found mention of what had become of Sam’s wife, Maud Woodworth Bean. If you recall, I had had trouble locating any records online of her passing. While I tend to doubt the accuracy of the diagnosis Sam gave as the cause of her death—a case of rheumatic fever—if she had prematurely lost her life owing to Marfan syndrome, as I suspect, there would have been little chance that anyone would have known that in 1933.

And yet, having been married to Sam for twelve years—not to mention, being the mother of his two sons—one would think she’d merit at least a mention by name. Though the narrative rehearsed the usual—that he met her while she was serving as a teacher at the school Sam was attending, and that their marriage was a happy one—all Sam said about her was, “I had a swell wife.”

Perhaps I’m being too hard on Sam at this point. Maybe it was the newspaper that was getting it wrong. After all, Sam was already misrepresented as having “had two years of study at the University of California” instead of the California School for the Deaf and Blind in Berkeley.

Despite the article’s flaws, it was here that I also found more details on the evolution of Sam’s business life. According to the Tribune, Sam had “expected to be a cabinet maker but the lure of living among people led him to become a salesman.”

The article also included a photograph of Sam with his “business companion,” Fred Schieff. The two worked in tandem for the Industrial Home for the Blind, where Sam was billed as star salesman of their products.

The Tribune article also confirmed other reports about Sam’s earlier business travels with his wife—those many times in which the two had toured, promoting his writings. The article closed with a taste of the simple sayings Sam used to remind himself to focus on the can-do, positive side of life.

            He and his wife traveled from coast to coast, Mexico to Canada, giving wide circulation among other things, to his philosophy:

            “The time to be happy is now; the place to be happy is here; the way to be happy is to make others so.”

            He presented to customers a little booklet, “Light in Darkness,” of his own poems. One states his theory:

            “Let grouch and pessimist depart—

            I want a happy cheerful heart.

            No matter if things go dead wrong,

            I’ll smile, or whistle, sing a song.

            I’ll rise in joy to greet the morn.

            And bless the day that I was born.”

Philosophy and the Fox Trot

“He plays chess as he does everything, wholeheartedly. Although he is so limited actually, he isn’t fanatically, preclusively engrossed in it, or anything. He does other things also.”

As Samuel Bean’s updated life story unfolded for yet another generation with the July 5, 1948, version published in the Oakland Tribune, an unnamed fellow chess player, as we read yesterday, alluded to the fact that Sam had other interests besides chess.

That would not be surprising—even for someone as focused on chess as Sam was. It takes a hefty amount of discipline to exclude all but one interest from a person’s life. Besides, as the news story mentioned, Sam “reads Braille, keeps up on current events and historical novels, and goes fishing and camping whenever the opportunity presents itself.”

Sounds pretty much like most every other person I know. Well…except for the “reads Braille” part.

What really got me was the next section of the article. Apparently, among the “other things” that Sam liked to do was one surprise—at least considering we are discussing a man who was both blind and deaf.

Evidently, though he couldn’t hear one note of the music, Sam liked to dance. The Tribune explained:

One partner reported that he merely asks whether it is a waltz or fox trot, swings into it and seldom bumps into other couples. She said that she tapped the tempo on his shoulder and they got along famously.

And why not? Since Sam was already attuned to people tapping in his hand as a form of communication, tapping on a shoulder to help him keep connected with the beat wouldn’t be much different. Dancing became another practical way for Sam to exhibit his confidence in life despite the barriers he faced.

That upbeat philosophy that kept Sam going “famously” on the dance floor may have been infectious in more ways than one. In retrospect, it gets me wondering who that nameless partner on the dance floor with Sam might have been.