{"id":21776,"date":"2010-09-30T08:17:08","date_gmt":"2010-09-30T12:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=21776"},"modified":"2011-08-18T15:37:19","modified_gmt":"2011-08-18T19:37:19","slug":"a-woman-for-all-seasons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2010\/09\/a-woman-for-all-seasons\/","title":{"rendered":"A Woman For All Seasons"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Barbara<\/a>
Barbara Beeching. Photo by Sheila Foran<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Barbara Beeching earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in 1950, President Harry S Truman was the graduation speaker. Beeching will be listening to another commencement speaker next May, when she receives her Ph.D. in history<\/a> from UConn.<\/p>\n

In the 60 years between these two degrees, Beeching married, raised six children, held a full time job with the state office of tourism, and completed a master\u2019s degree in American Studies at Trinity College in Hartford.<\/p>\n

It was her late husband Paul, lifelong teacher and associate dean emeritus in the school of arts & sciences at Central Connecticut State University, who suggested that since she\u2019d earned her master\u2019s, she should get \u2018serious\u2019 about her education and earn a Ph.D.<\/p>\n

\u201cPaul saw an article about an 82 year old woman who\u2019d gotten her Ph.D. in English at the University of Rhode Island. And he said to me, \u2018You\u2019re going to do this.\u2019 At first I thought there was no way,\u201d Beeching says, \u201cbut he kept encouraging me and by then I was retired, so I just decided to go ahead and try.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beeching, herself now 82, completed requirements for her degree this past August. Her dissertation is titled, \u201cGreat Expectations: Family and Community in Nineteenth Century Black Hartford,\u201d a subject that had piqued her interest during her studies for her master\u2019s at Trinity.<\/p>\n

That is when she first came across the Primus family, a middle-class black family living in Hartford during the mid-1800s. Among their children was a daughter, Rebecca, who became a school teacher and went to Maryland after the Civil War to establish a school for newly freed slaves. A son, Nelson, became a successful portrait painter in Boston and San Francisco.<\/p>\n

While much attention is paid to the issue of slavery in the South and the subsequent \u2018War Between the States,\u2019 the existence of thriving African-American communities in many Northern cities is often overlooked.<\/p>\n

In the course of her research, Beeching discovered that in 19th century Hartford, blacks had founded their own churches and schools; that they were approximately 98 percent literate; and that many held the goals of having a decent job, purchasing a house, and educating children that are commonly attributed to the middle class.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found that 90 percent of the blacks in Hartford in the mid-1860s had been born in the North, and something like 75 to 85 percent had been born in Connecticut \u2026 they were real Yankees,\u201d she says. \u201cI made up my mind to dig deeper and to explore the effects of abolition on these already established communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Altina Waller, former chair of UConn\u2019s history department<\/a> and Beeching\u2019s major advisor, says there was no doubt that this atypical student had what it takes to complete the Ph.D. journey, even though she began it considerably later than the typical doctoral candidate: \u201cShe was skilled at research, meticulous about getting her facts right, and she was a naturally good writer.\u201d<\/p>\n

And just as important, Waller says, \u201cBarbara is single minded in her pursuit of learning. She really wanted to know not only what happened to black Americans in the 1800s, but why. She has a real sense of social justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beeching says that during her student days at UConn, she never felt that her age was an impediment. She was welcomed by her fellow students and was treated no differently from any other scholar trying to meet the demands of a rigorous program.<\/p>\n

Her family is proud of her most recent achievement but not surprised. Her son, Simon, a professor of biology at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania, says of his mother, \u201cShe was a \u2018working mother\u2019 before that was a well-known phrase. She rode the city buses downtown to work, and brought groceries home in a yellow cab on Fridays. When I was a little boy, she made me ravioli by hand on my birthdays and took me to the [Wadsworth] Atheneum<\/a> in Hartford.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike all of us in the family,\u201d he adds \u201cBarb likes words and history and art and food. We wonder if her traditional classmates realized, while they were discussing early 20th century history, that one of them had actually been there for the event.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beeching\u2019s latest accomplishment still begs the question, \u201cWhy?\u201d and her answer is succinct. \u201cThere\u2019s no reason to stop learning,\u201d she says. \u201cI really enjoyed my courses. I like it when there\u2019s a set program. It makes everything related to the course more interesting and the more courses you take, the more inter-connected things are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beeching has given presentations on her research at professional and academic conferences, and has had several articles published in journals. She also has given some thought to getting her dissertation published.<\/p>\n

But, for now, her primary goal is to march down the aisle at next May\u2019s commencement ceremony, where she will be hooded by Professor Waller. No doubt there will be multiple generations of Beechings in the audience, cheering on their mother and grandmother and wondering, \u201cWhat will she do next?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barbara Beeching’s higher education spans 60 years: the 82 year old recently completed a Ph.D.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[56],"class_list":["post-21776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-30 15:08:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21776"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22017,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21776\/revisions\/22017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21776"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=21776"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=21776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}