At age 50, when Charlie Beals, AC ’39, had had enough of his engineering desk job at New England telephone, he asked to be reassigned to one of his first positions at the company, climbing the poles and installing telephones. The work took Beals all over Cape Cod, and he used the high vantage point atop the poles to discover trails, bridges, and parks, which he would turn into destinations for Sunday family trips.
After retirement, Beals bought a camper and hit every one of the continental United States with his wife, Evelyn.
“I remember seeing those TV ads that asked, ‘Do you know where your children are?’ ” says Charlie’s son Chuck with a laugh. “And I remember thinking, yeah, but I don’t know where my 
parents are.”
He maintained a lifelong love of working with his hands into his later years, including putting together a full deck after he was well into his 80s.
“He could build anything,” Chuck says.
Including, it seemed, an audience. Chuck says his father, deaf in one ear, typically kept conversations fairly one-sided: He told jokes, and everyone laughed—be it fellow churchgoers, neighbors, or a table of total strangers at a restaurant. (A typical crack from the bald-headed Beals: “I’ve been using Head & Shoulders shampoo; now my head looks like my shoulders.”)
Charles Augustus Beals, 94, died June 3, 2011. He was predeceased by a son, George, and a grandson, Craig. In addition to his wife and son, he is survived by daughters Sandra Asack, Carol Thornell, Elaine Vimont, and Virginia Ogden, as well as 12 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
—Dan Morrell
