[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 126 (Monday, September 23, 2013)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1361]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE OF EUGENIE MOORE BEAL

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                        HON. MICHAEL E. CAPUANO

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, September 23, 2013

  Mr. CAPUANO. Mr. Speaker, I rise to celebrate the life and honor the 
achievements of Genie Beal whom I was honored to represent in the 
House. Genie Beal lived 92 years with grace and purpose. Her Memorial 
Service will be held, fittingly, in the Arnold Arboretum on September 
26th. She was an urban environmentalist and untiring in her commitment 
to a principle important to me: city dwellers need to see and 
experience Nature. Loving the earth does not mean only cherishing 
wilderness. City parks must be made and maintained and, if necessary, 
fought for politically. Genie Beal was a pragmatic visionary, engaged 
and astute, and above all persistent. Her tact and charm served her 
well, and everyone who worked with her knew that her silken manners 
cloaked steely determination. My friend, Mayor Tom Menino, eulogized 
her as ``the mother of green space in the City of Boston.''
   Eugenie Beal was born to privilege in New York, grew up in 
Westchester County, and travelled widely in Europe even before she 
entered Radcliffe College. She spoke French and German well enough to 
qualify for a Harvard graduate seminar on linguistics. She was thus 
permitted to enter the stacks of Widener Library, then closed to 
Radcliffe ``girls,'' to carry out her philological researches. Her 
college years gave her an abiding love of Boston and she eventually 
settled in Massachusetts.
   She was active in the League of Women Voters which she encouraged to 
champion environmental causes. She convinced Mayor Kevin White that 
Boston needed a Conservation Commission, and in 1970 became its Chair. 
For the next forty years, her energy animated virtually all efforts to 
preserve open space: she served as the first director of the city's 
Environmental Department and on the Central Artery Completion Task 
Force, co-founded the Boston Natural Areas Network, and helped create 
the Emerald Necklace Conservancy.
   Today, I join with all my constituents to honor her as we reflect on 
the difference she has made in our surroundings, and, thus, in our 
lives.

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