Beanie was the son of Middlesex County Judge Arthur E. Beane. The family began summering in Duxbury when Beanie was eight. He shared his parents’ love of Duxbury and of antiques, but not of the law in the sense that it was ever going to be his career. He graduated from Belmont Hill School as a star baseball pitcher. He then went to Brown, whose sporting victories over Harvard and Yale he relished for 70 years, especially when they discomfited his best friends. As a collegian Beanie felt Duxbury’s pull and brought friends from Brown for sailing and socializing. On Sept. 21, 1938, he decided to ride out in Duxbury what would be the most severe New England hurricane of the 20th century. He left Providence, whose downtown streets would soon be under four feet of water. Trees were down on Route 44 at the Middleboro rotary; he drove onto a muddy field and made it around.

It was reckless, but the race to the summer place seems to have bespoken where he wanted to be. On the Cape, summer people are derided as “washashores.” But in a nation on the move, how many have found solace and identity in communities that started as summer retreats? To say washashores’ enduring commitment has not improved these towns is absurd.

Insurance was Beanie’s business, but his love was antiques and vintage stamps. He was a prodigious collector, a nationally-renowned appraiser of American furniture, and a generous donor. The Historic Winslow House in Marshfield, the Jones River Village Historical Society in Kingston and the Shirley-Eustis House in Roxbury long benefited from his gifts, and gift of time.

Beanie was a gentleman with a wry smile and a twinkle in his eye. But the twinkle had a bit of frat-boy to it – for the rest of his life he supported Psi Upsilon, his Brown Fraternity. In 1991, in advance of an important exhibit at the Shirley-Eustis House, he showed up in old clothes to polish the front knocker. By and by a lad stopped his car across the street. Rather than use the knocker or bell, he honked to summon his girlfriend. Beanie looked up and said, “Shut up, you...” – and may have used the Lord’s name in vain. It was well the lad didn’t hear. We later learned Beanie had a special interest in that knocker. He had donated it.

The call of summer shores needs no explaining, but for many its lifelong hold may be explained by the friendships made. This was so of Beanie. As a lad he dated several Duxbury girls who went on to marry his men friends. They all remained lifelong friends. The last time I went to see him at Newfield House I found him playing cards with four women. One of them asked, “Have I won anything?”

“No,” Beanie replied. “I’ve won everything!” He offered to adjourn to his room. I declined. He was in his element.

When Beanie and Mimi were married they did something common today, but unusual in the early 1940s: They moved into the summer house in Duxbury year-round. This was the 1802 Captain Samuel Hunt house at 286 Washington St. Its value was about $10,000. Across the street at 281 were the Cutlers, with whom the Beanes became great friends. When the twins David and Meg were born in 1943, Beanie became David’s godfather.

One of Beanie’s good friends was Charles Bittinger, Jr., whose family lived in the 1807 Capt. Gamaliel Bradford House at 942 Tremont St. Beanie and Charlie had a sailboat christened The Mad Plumber after an unnamed but real Duxbury plumber. The Bittingers’ home -- now owned by Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Kriegel, it is perhaps Duxbury’s most faithfully preserved historic house – may have played a role in Beanie and Mimi’s life. Despite their affection for Duxbury, in the early 1950’s they moved to the 1760 Squire William Sever House at 2 Linden St. in Kingston.

This property has terraces laid out by “Acadians.” These were French captives ordered deported by the British commander, Governor William Shirley, in 1755. This was the Shirley of the Shirley-Eustis House. Breaking families, he dispersed some 2,000 deportees -- more than were sent to Louisiana -- into towns across Massachusetts, lest they gather a rebellion. To this day, Shirley’s name is reviled in Nova Scotia. These captives formed the labor that laid out Squire Sever’s terraces in Kingston. In Duxbury, the ell of the Bradford/Bittinger/Kriegel house dates to 1738. Behind it are similar terraces, also created by Acadians. At both places they are intact today. Lovely gardens with a bitter history.

No one is left to say if friendship with the Bittingers brought about the Beanes’ purchasing the Sever House – only that they were lifelong friends, who shared a love of antiques, architecture and art. (Charles Bittinger, Sr., was a Paris-trained artist and MIT-trained scientist. In both world wars he designed camouflage for U.S. Naval ships. Later, his oil paintings were sold at the Duxbury Art Association, which he founded.)

The Beanes’ friends in Kingston included Walter and Virginia Birge, and Dr. Raymond Russo and his wife Milly. In retirement, Walter Birge served as a substitute teacher at Duxbury High School under Principal Jack Hill. Dr. Russo is in his 65th year of caring for the region’s pets.

After Beanie had blissfully retired to pursue his love of antiques, the Beanes sold the Squire Sever House and returned to Duxbury. They bought a modern house on Standish Street, which they turned into a gallery of antiques. Later, they moved to the Village at Duxbury. For the last two years of his life Beanie lived at Newfield House.

At the end of his life Beanie had no greater blessing than Charlie Bittinger’s daughter, Mary Gay Jordan, who visited him often from her home in Virginia; drove him to the places he loved; and listened to the stories from his prodigious memory. Beanie was ahead of his time in that he had women friends. He liked women, and unlike some frat-boys, he showed it well. Mary Jordan was devoted to him like a daughter. She has confirmed many of our separate memories, and has filled in gaps for a writer wishing to do justice to the memory of a man of 93. Gaps necessarily remain. We have done our best for a good fellow.