Jeanette Loper Beebe’s favorite quote was “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop,” and she kept her own hands ever occupied as a homemaker, mother of three, and volunteer who was often busy at home helping others.
Having taught herself to knit as a preteen, she continued to enjoy the hobby throughout her life, giving many skillfully fashioned creations to her family and friends. She typed textbooks for the blind, sewed clothing for orphans in Appalachia, knit for soldiers during World War II, created quilts for the Retired Senior Volunteer Program, and made baby items for Birthright.
Even after losing her eyesight to macular degeneration and up until a month before her death, she continued her crafts, crocheting afghans and lap blankets for the Richard M. Campbell Veterans Home in South Carolina “by counting her stitches and using her fingers to feel her way through the rows.”
Mrs. Beebe, formerly of East Hampton, died on July 15 at NHC HealthCare Anderson in South Carolina. She was 98 and had been living in South Carolina for the past 18 years.
Born on March 11, 1926, in Amagansett to Walter N. Loper and the former Lillian M. Rackett, she was a 12th-generation descendant of the whaling family of James Loper and also counted the Edwards whalers and fishermen among her ancestors.
She spent her early years in Amagansett, where she attended grade school first in a small schoolhouse on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Montauk Highway, and then in the new school building that opened in 1937. She remembered watching the Hurricane of 1938 through the school windows and seeing huge elm trees fall “like matchsticks in the storm,” her family wrote.
The family moved to East Hampton in 1939, and she graduated from East Hampton High School, then on Newtown Lane, in 1944.
She went to work at the Bulova Watchcase Factory in Sag Harbor, until marrying Thomas G. Beebe on Feb. 8, 1947. They raised a daughter and two sons in East Hampton.
Mr. Beebe was a popular caller at square dances, often hired to teach or call dances all over Long Island. The Beebes were square dancers themselves and members of clubs including the Seaside Swingers and Cellar Squares. They danced weekly at Ashawagh Hall in Springs and in Hampton Bays.
Mrs. Beebe was a member of the American Legion Ladies Auxiliary and the Presbyterian Church in East Hampton.
Mr. Beebe died in 1985.
In 2006, she moved to Pendleton, S.C., where she built a small house across the street from her daughter and son-in-law, Kathleen and Mike Waygood. She lived there until entering a nursing home in 2022.
She is also survived by a son, John A. Beebe of Williamston, S.C., and by seven grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren, and four great-great-grandchildren. Another son, Thomas N. Beebe, died in 2006, and three sisters also died before her.
In South Carolina, she was a member of Wren Baptist Church. A service was held on July 20 at the chapel at the Robinson Funeral Home in Easley, S.C. Her ashes will be taken at a later date to Cedar Lawn Cemetery in East Hampton, where they will be buried beside her husband.
