Dr. Richard S. Beal Jr. was my dad. A year or so before he died, he handed me his autobiography, the first draft of a book about his life, and asked me to publish it and pass it on to the family. As I read his notes and stories, I realized it was not unlike a graduate level textbook, easy for some to read but not for most of us. Considerable editing would be required.
I also realized there were gaps. Large time periods had been omitted from his life which I thought would be of interest to a reader and should be included. Some of these gaps, I guessed, were perhaps too painful to address. I suspect some gaps indicated a different frame of mind, suggesting he was simply not interested in it or he had forgotten because it was dull.
He was the graduate dean at Northern Arizona University for 20 years. You would think he would have a great deal to say about that time in his life, but he did not. His memory of administrative work at NAU consisted of pushing papers and attending meetings.
He found joy and satisfaction outside, in nature, collecting insects and understanding more of God's creation. I recalled some stories about NAU's President, Dr. Walkup, his boss whom he admired greatly, and other interesting quips I heard at the dinner table.
Dr. Walkup used to drop by and visit once a month or so. I also remembered many quiet conversations with Dad as well as many stories of adventure and discovery that simply had to be in such a book as this.
The gaps in the book were written by me. They are my memories of living with him, as well as a few stories from others. Some of my memories are of conversations while sitting on his office floor at our house.
There were conversations in the desert while camping out in sleeping bags, conversations at the dinner table and conversations in the car. Other memories consist of what I saw and learned about him for over 60 years.
Much of the time he was turning over rocks, pulling bark off dead pine trees, looking under cow pies, pulling swallow nests out from under high bridges, finding aquatic insects, sitting in church, driving in the forest, camping, hiking, leading boy scouts, and more.
When you read this book, you will first notice it is not in a perfect timeline. The first chapter tells you what my life with Dr. Richard S. Beal Jr. looked like growing up, accompanied by plenty of adventure and fun.
The next chapters consist of his early life and are broken into categories like growing up in Tucson, snakes and zoology, Boy Scouts, homelife, pets and vacations, dating, education, and more adventure. You will see what life was like living in early Tucson before and during the great depression.
The book brings you interesting people he and my mother, Billie, meet along the way like Virgil Partch, Bishop John Taylor Smith, John Dillinger, Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer, Bernard Ramm, Jim Rayburn, Dr. Harry Ironside, Dr. Harold Ockenga, Dr. Robert Snodgrass, and Dr. Carl Armerding to name a few.
After my Mother died, Dad remarried for the remaining 27 years of his life and made it all the way to the ripe old age of 98. It seemed as if the end of his life was just as, or even more productive, than the beginning, but you should decide that.
I also included some addendum's at the end you might find interesting or helpful in understanding who he was and how he thought. I briefly prefaced each of his actual writings about Christian faith, atheism, and the Biblical account of the flood from the book of Genesis.
After leaving NAU, he was deeply concerned with how Christian college students would keep their faith in such a faithless environment. He felt that few of them were well prepared.
In Dad's view, they didn't know their Bible or have much understanding of science. This concern prompted the insertion of the addendum's.
