MEMORIAL MINUTE
ACHSA MABEL BEAN 1900 - 1975
Achsa Bean was a member of the Vassar faculty from 1938 until
her retirement, as College Physician and Professor of Hygiene, in
l963. She was a down—easter, born and bred, and retired to the
house she and her life-long friend, Dr. Barbara Stimpson, had de-
signed and built in Owl's Head, Maine. She died there in March
l975.
Her life was unusually rich and varied. She was a fearless
woman, not afraid to tackle anything, and part of that surely came
from her upbringing in Maine. She took her B.A. and M.A. at the
University of Maine, but she had to interrupt her course of study
to earn money; so she taught at the Kenneybunkport High School and
ran the town library. She spent six years on the University's
faculty as Assistant Professor of Zoology and Dean of Women -
stepping-stones to her on the way to realizing her determination to
become a physician. She finally was able to begin the study of medi-
cine at Radcliffe College and completed her M.D. at the University
of Rochester. She came to Vassar in l938 as Assistant Physician and
Assistant Professor of Health and Hygiene.
Three years later, in l9Al, she answered the call of the Red
Cross for volunteers to care for civilian and military casualties in
England. There she stayed until late l942, having been sworn into
the British Army Medical Corps as a lieutenant, one of the first two
American women doctors to serve in that corps. (The other was Dr.
Stimpson, her old friend, who later practiced in Poughkeepsie as a
distinguished orthopedic surgeon.) She served in various military
hospitals and as a member of the honorary staff of the Royal Free
Hospital in London. This was the year of the blitz and she was
frequently under fire; in fact she was bombed out of her house in
London: as she used to say, with some nostalgia, just as she was
heading for the luxury of a rarely come by deep bath, the bathroom
was blown up. She had been promoted to major‘s rank before she re-
turned, briefly, to Vassar - coming back because, she said, she
“wanted to play on the home team“. In early l943 she became one of
the first women physicians to join the Women's Reserve of the U.S.
Navy, and was one of the first WAVES to be ordered overseas. She
was sent to Pearl Harbor as Senior Medical Officer for enlisted
Waves in the lhth Naval District. Three years later, in l9h6, she
ended her naval career with the rank of Lieutenant Commander, and
came back to Vassar as College Physician and Professor of Hygiene -
to what must have seemed to her then a trivial series of illnesses
and ailments.
Not that one would ever have known that from her. But those
who worked closely with her could easily imagine it, for though she
was infinitely patient, generous, and kind with the truly ill and
truly disturbed — student, employee, faculty member - she gave
notoriously short shrift to “gold-brickers“. "I might just as well
be down at the corner of Main and Market casting for bass“ was one
of her tart comments on the malingerer. Her no-nonsense approach
created a most bracing atmosphere around her and Baldwin House.
ACHSA MABEL BEAN I900 - I975
In this she was helped by her physical presence: she was a woman
built on a large scale and had a voice that could match it. She
was impressive, not to say intimidating, without the uniform; with
it, she must have seemed like a dreadnought to some poor Tommies
and Waves. But behind all that facade was a most sensitive, per-
ceptive, and warm human being, and an almost uncannily astute diag-
nostician. Among all her professional colleagues she was noted for
that skill: in Poughkeepsie, in Rochester where she taught at the
Medical College for many years, and at Columbia Presbyterian where
she served one day a week in clinic all the years she was at Vassar.
Among her most respectful and devoted students were a whole series
of Vassar College physicians, psychiatrists, and administrators.
Everything about Achsa Bean was on a large scale: herself, her
hearty sense of humor, her gargantuan appetite. She loved people,
dogs, music, flowers, food - in about that order. She had a splendid
voice and for years was a prized and popular ham in Faculty shows.
She was never without dogs and one of her most endearing traits to
dog-lovers was that occasionally, as a rare privilege to a trusted
friend, she would allow a dog to accompany the afflicted to Baldwin
House. She was a green-thumb gardener and always had flowers about
her, and she was a superb cook.
But most of all she loved people and she spent her life, in and
out of her profession, serving them. In Poughkeepsie she worked on
innumerable medical and hospital boards, the New York State and
American College Health Associations, and many local committees. She
was in demand as a speaker to local groups, where she defended, always
in a fresh and lively fashion, such causes as the nursing profession,
cancer research, planned parenthood, and understanding the adolescent.
In Owl's Head, in her retirement, she was no less active: she was
the local school doctor, a State Inspector of nursing homes, a con-
sultant in Health and Welfare, a member of the town's Planning Board,
and, to top it off, a Deaconess and member of the Music Committee of
her Congregational Church.
Achsa Bean was a tough-fibred New Englander. She inherited
ideals of loyalty and service and she gave her life to furthering
them. In moments of crisis she reverted to the typical New England
habit of understatement. Dr. Stimpson tells of her classic remark
durin the thick of a submarine attack on their voyage to England
in l9EI. Dr. Bean came down to her stateroom, she says, and gently
but firmly roused her with the words: "Get up - I think we're having
an incident".
Submarines, like other problems, were just the incidents of
Achsa Bean's life.
Jean Stevenson
Ruth Timm
Marion Tait