Edgar A. Beem Jr. ’49

Edgar A. Beem Jr. ’49 died February 6, 2014, at Brentwood Center for Health & Rehabilitation in Yarmouth. He was born on February 10, 1924, in Warren, Ohio, and graduated from Deering High School in 1942 and Maine Maritime Academy in 1944. He served aboard U.S. Merchant Marine Liberty ships in the Mediterranean and Atlantic during World War II then enrolled at Bowdoin, where he was a member of Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. He went on to serve to lieutenant senior grade in the Navy aboard minesweepers in the Pacific during the Korean War. For years afterward, he worked as a salesman for Metropolitan Life Insurance but, in 1966, at the age of 42, he returned to his first love and shipped out on tankers as an able-bodied seaman. Over the next twenty-three years, he sailed for Sun Oil, Academy Tankers, United Fruit, and the Brotherhood of Marine Officers, working his way up to captain, licensed to command any ship on any ocean. He retired in 1989, but he returned to sea briefly in 1990 following the Gulf War to help take freighters out of the U.S. mothball fleet and ferry equipment from the Gulf to Europe. He was a member of the Westbrook-Warren Congregational Church, American Legion, and the Masonic Order. He is survived by sons Edgar A. III, Paul C., and Dana M. Beem; seven grandchildren, including Tess T. Beem ’13; four great-grandchildren; and a sister, Janet Frost. He was predeceased by his wife, Betty Gibson Beem, whom he married on July 31, 1948, and his younger brother, Gordon R. Beem ’50.

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