Alan D. Henry 1923-2011 by Les Sullivan

Alan features so prominently on this website because he spent many years of his life researching and sharing Beebe Family History information to the great benefit of Beebe’s throughout the world. He was also co-editor of “The Beebe Connection” newsletter. His wife Marion was the Beebe in the family. At a time when computers were in their infancy and, quite frankly, keeping track of data was much harder than it is today, Alan became a contact point for anyone, particularly in America, looking into their Beebe ancestry. He delighted in being able to help others. When Alan passed away in 2011, it was feared that his computerised database would be lost and it was his wish that it should be preserved and made freely available. To that end it was donated to a national library who, it appears, either lost or failed to make use of those records. While, from my perspective, Alan “looked after the Beebe’s in USA”, I was trying to achieve a similar one name study in UK and back in 1994 I created the beginnings of this website. Now, in 2020, after some prompting by Ken Beebe who is also enthusiastic about saving Alan’s work, I have been in touch with Alan’s daughter Lynda Henry and to our great relief she has had the foresight to ensure that Alan’s computer was kept intact and that backup copies of his data had been preserved. Lynda has very kindly made Alan’s data available to me and agreed to its publication on this website so that once more it is freely available to assist fellow Beebe’s in Alan’s memory. I wanted to put together a few notes about Alan, and Lynda passed on to me a link to his obituary which I reproduce with a couple of additional photographs further down this page. During WW2, Alan was in Holland and that struck a note with me as my wife Christine is Dutch and her family still live there. I was moved to read what one family wrote recently as a tribute to Alan so many years after the war: Dear Lynda, your father was among the liberators of Eindhoven in September 1944. He "liberated" also my family and had a gun-position in our garden that overlooked a field full of german SS-ers. I remember him very well personally. He was very considerate for us and came back walking after a heavy bombardement to see if everybody at ours was allright. In the seventies he tried to contact us again but that failed. I was moved by his death for although I was a kid in a few days he became my friend. I'm happy to find his daughter and let her know that my family has honoured his remembrance. Gery van Veldhoven G.M. van Veldhoven April 22, 2019 | Tilburg, Netherlands The photograph on the right was taken the day that Holland was liberated. Alan is the soldier in the middle with his arm gently around the little girl. Obituary - Alan D. Henry Alan D. Henry, age 88, passed away September 3rd, 2011, at The Toledo Hospital with his daughter by his side. He was born January 29th, 1923, in Randolph, New York. When Alan was young boy, his family moved to Toledo in 1930. He served in World War II as a Paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division and he was also an instructor at the Jump School at Chelton Foliet, England. Prior to his serving his country, he married his life long wife, Marion B. (Beebe) Henry, on June 7, 1942. They had a son who was less than a year old when Alan went into the service. Alan parachuted into Holland in 1944 with the liberation of Eindhoven. In September of that same year he participated in all of the campaigns that the 101st Airborne Division completed in World War II. After the war, their daughter Lynda J. Henry was born. The family lived in Toledo and later moved to Temperance, Michigan and Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. In 1949 Alan went to work for the Army as a civilian at the Rossford Ordnance Depot near Toledo. He later was part of the Army's Development and Readiness Command which was located at the Tobyhanna Depot in the Pocono Mountains in Eastern Pennsylvania. He retired in 1978 as Chief of Packaging, Storage and Containerization Center of the Development and Readiness Command. Left to cherish his memory is his daughter, Lynda J. Henry of Fulton, N.Y.; grandchildren, Shantel Lee (Marc) Oliveri, Ryan David (Mindy) Henry and Erin Marie (Jason) Vaughan, all of Texas; 5 great- grandchildren, all of Texas and daughter-in-law, Jenny Henry of Texas. In addition to his parents he was preceded in death by his wife, Marion in 2010; son, Larry Lee Henry in 2005; one brother and two sisters.