Thomas J. Beals (1925)
BEALS, PARKER
Posted By: Pat Hochstetler
Date: 11/22/2014 at 07:54:21
Earlham Echo
Earlham, Iowa
Thursday, February 5, 1925T. J. Beals Victim of Deadly Malady
Stricken with Mitral Insufficiency Wednesday Morning, Death Ensures in Few Minutes. Community Mourns Loss of Faithful Official and Merchant.
Again the community has been brought face to face with the reality of eternity, the mystery that lies beyond these smiling, brooding, careless years of the finite life. Death has struck down one who but a moment ago was one of us, as the swift-flying bullet strikes down our comrade in arms. It is hard to believe that Thomas Beals is dead. He seemed too competent, too busy, too essential to those dependent upon his labors to leave it all. Yet his summons came in the twinkling of an eye. A mercy to die thus. The indomitable spirit that would not be crushed by a burden of sorrow and ill-health could not have chosen a more merciful release.
Mr. Beals was suffering agony from heart trouble when he came up town in the morning and sought Dr. Stalford’s office for relief. He was in great distress after the effort, but rallied under the influence of a powerful heart stimulant and reclined on a couch in the office apparently recovering his strength. These symptoms were deceptive, and the summons came even while Dr. Stalford was absent for a few moments in an adjoining office. He was gasping for breath, his heart had ceased to beat. Emergency measures, powerful drugs could no longer stay the process of dissolution which had begun, hours, years before. For Mr. Beals has not been a well man for many years. He has carried on under the tremendous handicap of failing physical powers, of a heart that could not keep pace with the ambition of the man.
Mr. Beals carried a heart of gold beneath a face that carefully masked his real feelings. Life paid him little in the way of amusement, he smiled rarely, and we cannot recall a laugh from his lips. Yet the heart was there as those in his confidence well realized. His sense of duty was highly developed and he was unremitting in his prosecution of wrong-doing. Yet he was a lenient judge and knew the quality of mercy. His judgments were always fair even though they hurt at times. Above all he was a man of utter honesty. His business associates reposed the most complete confidence in his integrity, and he held many positions of trust at the time of his death.
A noble life, a life of sacrifice. A life so somber in its devotion to duty, its renunciation of pleasure, as to set in bold relief the error of this modern age. His friends and business associates will alike honor this memory of a man so fearless and conscientious in the pursuit of duty. And we shall miss him sorely in those humble walks of life in which he moved with us.
The following obituary gives the simple life history of Thomas Beals:
Thomas Jefferson, son of Samuel and Amy Beals, was born near Newton, Iowa, on Sept. 12, 1859, and passed to his Heavenly home at Earlham, Iowa, Feb. 4, 1925, aged 65 years, 4 months and 22 days. On Feb. 25, 1882 at Newton, Iowa, he was united in marriage with Miss Ruth J. Parker. To this happy union six children were born, one a baby boy dying in infancy, Rosa passing away at the age of nine, and last spring Minnie went to be with Jesus. The three living children, William S., of Chetek, Wis., and Amy and Jennie at home with the wife and mother and two grandchildren are left to mourn their loss. In the fall of 1893 they young couple moved to this vicinity, settling in the Bear Creek neighborhood where they resided until 1901, when they moved to their present residence in Earlham.
Thomas Beals was a birthright member of the Friends Church and early in life experienced the New Birth and ever after lived a true, constant, consistent, Christian life. He was an active member of the Earlham Meeting, serving it in many capacities and at the time of his death was an elder, also a trustee of the Meeting. He was also a Justice of the Peace and Clerk of the Town of Earlham at the time of his passing away. He was of a quiet, retiring disposition, his chief delight and joy being in his home and with the family whom he loved devotedly and who as they have grown to manhood and womanhood have been and are a credit to the parents who bore them and the community in which they live. In the passing of Thomas Beals Earlham has lost a substantial, honest and upright business man, the Friends Church, a loyal and devoted member, and the cause of Christianity a man who was “a living Epistle known and read of men.”
Funeral services were conducted at the Friends Church on Friday, Feb. 6 by his pastor S. H. Williams assisted by Dewitt Foster, pastor of Des Moines Friends Meeting, and the remains laid to rest in Bear Creek Cemetery.
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