Remembering a Healdsburg soldier's supreme sacrifice
Stan Derkx, the Dutch man who along with his wife and two young children have taken responsibility for tending the grave of Healdsburg soldier Arthur Colvin Beeman. Beeman died fighting in Germany in 1944.
Stan DerkxPublished: Monday, July 4, 2011 at 5:54 p.m.
Last Modified: Monday, July 4, 2011 at 6:18 p.m.
He was a Healdsburg police officer who joined the Army as a private during World War II and died fighting in Germany in 1944.
Now the Dutch family that “adopted” and cares for the grave of Arthur Colvin Beeman in a military cemetery in Europe has reached out to his relatives and stirred memories of his life and sacrifice.
“I had goose bumps and was almost in tears,” said his daughter, Carol Davy, when she learned of efforts to honor a father she hardly knew. “I think it's wonderful.”
She was about 8 years old when her father died and has only a dim recollection of the tall, blond, blue-eyed police officer who was 32 when he was killed.
But the efforts by strangers on another continent to find her, to let her know they regularly put flowers on her father's grave and have researched his story, are an object lesson.
“Considering what we in the public do for our military — that's the deceased, the ones wounded and severely wounded — it just makes me wish to heck all of our people could be as generous as the people over there, because they really care and they keep the memory going that we helped them,” Davy said by telephone from her home in Carson City, Nev.
From her perspective, “my father gave his life not just for the people of Europe, but for us, too.”
In France, Belgium and the Netherlands, residents near American military cemeteries tend the many graves marked by rows of identical white crosses.
They still appreciate those who gave their lives to liberate their countries from Nazism and German occupation 66 years ago.
Stan Derkx, the Dutch man who along with his wife and two young children have taken responsibility for Beeman's grave, wrote: “As a grave adopter, I think it's an obligation to the family left behind to let them know that the grave of their father, uncle, nephew is being honored and taken care of overseas in Europe by liberated people.”
Derkx lives in the south of Netherlands in the province of Limburg. During World War II, there was fierce fighting in the region between Allied forces and the Germans.
Beeman is buried in the American cemetery Henry Chapelle in Belgium, about 25 miles from Derkx' home.
In the cemetery “are buried 7,992 U.S. soldiers, who gave their ultimate sacrifice for our freedom,” Derkx said in an email. “Since our liberation in 1945, the local people of this cemetery adopted all of the 7,992 graves to honour their lives and their family's.”
He said the tradition is passed on to the next generation, “so the graves will be always honored.”
That means visiting them every Christmas, Memorial Day and on other holidays.
The website, www.adoptiegraven.nl/english, provides information about the program and some biographical details about those interred in Henry Chapelle and in two other area cemeteries where thousands of Americans were buried.
Derkx noted the fallen soldiers were young, often no older than 20. Because he served in the Dutch Army, he said he can relate to their service.
He wanted to know more about Beeman and Googled his name. He also requested personnel records from Fort Knox, Ky., which provided him with information on the next of kin.
His research led to the website of the Healdsburg Museum and Historical Society, which has only 200 photographs archived online from its collection of more than 16,000 digital photos.
But coincidentally, two of the photos on the website are of Beeman, who grew up on an Alexander Valley ranch and graduated from Healdsburg High in 1932.
One photo shows him as a police officer, circa 1943. The other is a family portrait taken in the late 1930s, with his infant daughter Carol on his lap.
Holly Hoods, the museum curator, was contacted by Derkx and became the go-between for him, Beeman's daughter and other relatives.
“I thought it was amazing,” she said of the Dutchman's outreach. “This has brought forward all of these different people who are relatives of Arthur Beeman.”
Hoods discovered significant details about Beeman because about 10 years ago his daughter donated to the museum a number of artifacts, including his Purple Heart and the military telegrams to his family when he was missing in action and declared dead.
His name also is among others on a small veterans memorial statue in Healdsburg Plaza.
Beeman signed up for the Army in 1943. His two brothers also were in the military during the war.
His character recommendation from the police department where he had been an officer for a couple years described him as “above reproach, courteous, prompt and dependable,” Hoods said.
Beeman was sent to France in July 1944, but suffered a leg wound from shrapnel wounds when his infantry unit was overrun by German Tiger tanks.
“Private Beeman and his buddy, although both wounded, managed to fire six Bazooka shells into the tank,” read an official military release that was published in the Healdsburg Tribune in 1944.
Newspaper stories at the time said he was sent back to England, where he spent a month recovering in the hospital. By late September, he had rejoined his unit in France.
On Oct. 13, he was killed in Germany. The circumstances of his death aren't clear.
“It's impossible for me to give you any of the facts surrounding his death, other than the fact that he gave his life as the supreme sacrifice for our country and the continuance of its freedoms,” an Army chaplain wrote to the family.
His daughter Carol said at the time of his death “I was very young. He and my mother had split up.”
She has only one mental image of her father. “All I have is a dark figure behind the steering wheel picking me up to go to my grandparents' homestead for Christmas,” she said.
Most of what she knows about him came from family and friends. “From what I understand, he was one hell of a good guy,” she said, adding that even her mother had good memories of her former husband.
“He was outgoing and a happy-go-lucky sort of guy, always laughing,” recalled Al Cadd, an Alexander Valley rancher who was in his teens when he went hunting and fishing with Beeman. “He was willing to help anyone, anytime.”
Diana Beeman of Healdsburg said it's “absolutely wonderful” that someone is caring for her uncle's grave.
She was born a year after his death, but said it was devastating to the family. “The idea that someone would care, that's even better,” she said.
The Derkx family encouraged Davy to come to Europe to meet them next year and visit her father's grave, but that looks unlikely.
“I am not going to be able to get over to Belgium anymore. My health will not permit it,” Davy said. “All of this coming up, it leaves you breathless.”
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