Alexander H. Beard, Jr.
May 1, 2026Remembrance from Bob Hammond: The July/August 2026 edition of YAM arrived in our US Postal mail box yesterday afternoon. After looking at some of the articles and promising myself I would read them in detail over the next few days, I turned to the ever-engaging and informative notes of our class secretary John Pinney who successfully blends good news and optimism with sad reporting of additional classmates lost in recent days.
Last night I was saddened to learn from John, “…Jeremy Beard, Alex Beard’s son wrote to tell me that Alex died on May 1…”
Alex was a loyal contributor to our Discussion Group. According to the summary of correspondence I was able to access, Alex wrote 420 letters to the class DG since the current record was started in 2019.
According to our 50th reunion book Alex, met Judith, who was a student at Southern Connecticut State, on a blind date when he was a junior and they were married in June ‘65. Judith was an art educator. They had two children, Jeremy and Valerie. After military service in Okinawa, Alex earned an MBA at Rutgers and became a CPA initially with Price Waterhouse. In 1963, Alex and his brother took over the family textile business in Quebec, which they ran until 2008, when “…the textile business in North America collapsed…” due to “…the flood of inexpensive imports from Asia.”
Alex and Judy lived in Manhattan. Alex was very active in governance of the Yale Club from 1987-2012.
In our 50th class book Alex wrote, “I am disturbed by what I see as a shift in the country to European style socialism with big government, which is the antithesis of what the founders intended (limited federal government with most power devolved to the states). Of particular concern around the world are militants running rampant in a lot of places, civil war in Syria and Iraq, belligerence by Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, and the intractable Middle East situation. The current administration* seems incapable of dealing with it in any meaningful way… It seems to me that the world is a far more dangerous place now than before the end of the Cold War. There is a lot to worry and be scared about for us (not for that much longer), but for our children and grandchildren in the future…”
* Obama was President in 2015
I did not find a published obituary for Alex.
Alex never wavered from his “conservative” views over the ensuing 11 years of his correspondence with the class.
I never knew Alex personally. The only time I had a partial visual identification of him was when he apparently objected to something the speaker (I believe it was Bob Woodward) said during one of our class dinners and stood up dramatically, taking his wife by her arm and storming out of the dining room. I learned Alex’s identity sometime later after the event from one of the other attendees. While I strenuously disagreed with everything Alex wrote on the DG and however much I objected in my core to his beliefs and philosophy at the same time, I appreciated and respected his participation in the listserv and the DG.
RIP
Bob
Remembrance from Burt Haimes: I knew Alex and apart from our divergent political views, we got along well and were friends. We shared a love of Yale football. He was a good guy and will be missed. I met him through Ted O’Leary who has also passed.