Dorothy (Beck) Babcock

Dorothy Beck was born December 27, 1897 in New York City, the second daughter and fourth child of Theodore Lewis Beck and Cora Scott Beck. She lived on 101st street in the city only a short time before the family moved out to the suburbs of Summit, New Jersey, to live first on Crescent Avenue, and then at 41 Woodland Avenue. Her brothers, Alexander, born in 1892; John, born in 1893; and her sister, Margery Elizabeth, born in 1895, and she were devoted to each other. The three eldest children never married, and lived together until their deaths, in 1968, 1971 and 1977. Only Dorothy was to marry and move away from Summit.

John, Alex, Cora, Dorothy, and Margery - Lake Placid, New York - 1898

The Becks lived across the street from their uncle and aunt, Will and Clara Beck, and their only child, a daughter Margaret, who was the same age as Dorothy. The two girls grew up as both cousins and best friends. They attended Kent Place School for girls in Summit. Dorothy was to meet her future husband, Carlile Babcock, through his two sisters, Mary and Alida, who also attended Kent Place.

Since her mother was an invalid for many years, Dorothy, or Dot as she was called then by her family and friends, grew up being cared for by a nurse, Hermione Mathilda Sophia Albrecht. Minnie was a German woman who doted on the baby of the family, and probably gave her more affection than did her preoccupied and sickly mother. Dorothy's mother finally died of tuberculosis in 1913.

During the heat of summer the Becks would move to the mountains near Lake Placid to stay for a month or so. There are wonderful photographs taken of the family dressed in their summer finery: the boys, Alex and John, in sailor suits; Margery and Dot in long white dresses adorned with ruffles and bows. It is an idyllic looking scene in the old photographs.

In May, the family would make a two- day trip to the Goodwill Cemetery in Montgomery, Orange County, New York, where the Beck family plot was located. The cousins would watch their parents clean the area and replant peonies to grace the stones of their grandparents, aunts and uncles.

Goodwill Presbyterian Church - Montgomery, New York

Dorothy commented once that it was an excursion for them, rather than a duty, and was one of the highlights of spring, an occasion to reminisce and visit with the other relatives.

Dorothy's father, Theodore Beck was a forceful man with his children. He sent both of his sons to engineering school, though Alec would have preferred to do something else. When Dorothy wanted to go on to college, she was discouraged from this, and told that she could attend the Savage Institute, where she received training as a physical education teacher. With this training she worked briefly in a YWCA before her marriage. Margery was given the task of running the house after her mother's death, and this she would do for the rest of her life.

Dot married Carlile Babcock on October 10, 1925 at the Central Presbyterian Church in Summit, New Jersey, in a short dress with a long train, looking very much like a flapper. Her wedding picture was taken in the parlor at 41 Woodland Avenue, with banks of ferns in the background.

Theodore Beck died on May 27, 1927 in Summit. His service was on May 30, and Dot attended this, but was told by her obstetrician, Maynard Bensley, that she could not go with the rest of the family to the new family plot at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx for the internment. Her first baby, Margery Elizabeth Babcock, was born later that day at Overlook Hospital.

Her second daughter, Alida Kelsey Babcock, was born January 16, 1930; Guilford Carlile Babcock III was born April 11, 1931; and Alexander Beck Babcock was born March 18, 1933. The family lived at 158 Bellevue Avenue in Summit, with the large open backyard and woods for the children to play in.

In 1936, the family moved to Bradenton, Florida, where Carlile worked in the office of Stapling Machines Company in Lakeland. Dot particularly enjoyed a visit of several months with her beloved cousin Margaret, now married to James MacCallum, a professor at Dartmouth, and the mother of two girls, Margaret and Alison, and a boy, Bill, who were the right ages to play with their second cousins. We have some wonderful pictures of the cousins lined up on the beach in their woolen bathing suits.

Dorothy started quilting during these days in Florida, where she could hire a seamstress to do the quilting portion for $5.00 a quilt, after she had finished the piecing herself. The colors of the quilts are the pale pinks and blues and greens of the thirties. She kept a trunk full of bolts of material and partially pieced quilts ready to be quilted for many years.

In 1938, Carlile visited Pasadena, and fell in love with California. The children made the transition to life first in Altadena and then in Pasadena at 1099 Arden Road, but Dorothy was never to feel that she was completely a Californian. Her roots in Summit, and her deep affection for her brothers and sister would always claim her attention.

1099 Arden Road, Pasadena, CA	Marge, Lydy, Carlile, Mike

She joined a group called the Mother's Club at the Pasadena Presbyterian Church, and spent many satisfying hours with the ladies in that organization. Carlile ran the USO for servicemen at PPC, which was one of the largest and most successful canteens in the country. The minister of PPC, Eugene Carson Blake, was an old friend of the Babcock family. He had been a classmate and good friend of Kelsey Babcock, Carlile's younger brother, while they were in the Class of 1927 at Princeton University, and had stayed close to the family after Kelsey's tragic death in a car accident in 1926. Uncle Gene's first wife, Valina, was often ill, and so he would come alone to the Babcocks' several times a week for dinner and a bridge game.

The beach house at 826 West Bay Avenue in Balboa was purchased in 1942, soon after Pearl Harbor and the start of the United States' involvement in World War II. The original owner's wife had been a French war bride after World War I, and had no intention of participating in civil defense on the West Coast, after the Japanese made their expected attack on the California beaches. Determined to reach the safety of the Midwest as soon as possible, she sold the house furnished down to the last placemat. The pink stucco house was decorated in an Art Deco style, which was very fashionable at the time.

Dot and the children would come to the beach as soon as school closed for summer vacation, and would stay there until it was time to return for the start of school. Guil and Mike did a lot of sailing at the Newport Harbor Yacht Club, which was only a short block away from the house. The Yacht Club was very busy in those war years when the harbor was the only place for the sailors to race. Carlile could commute between the house in Pasadena and the beach, because so much of his work involved driving around Southern California.

Dot would start out the summer working on her pots and planting tuberous begonia bulbs, which she would buy from a little nursery in Corona Del Mar. Over the years there would be more and more geranium plants to brighten the front patio.

Always a great reader, a lover of history and biography, Dorothy would relish her time at the beach. It was very frustrating to her during the last year of her life to begin to lose her eyesight and have to stop reading. She enjoyed her garden in Pasadena, especially the roses, of which she had probably a hundred bushes when she died. She took great pleasure in watching and feeding the birds which came to her garden.

Dorothy Beck Babcock, summertime at the beach house, with Jamie, Gwen & Guil Babcock's standard Poodle - 1970

Dorothy Beck Babcock died on September 22, 1982 at the Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena after being there only two days. She is buried with her husband, her parents and her brothers and sister in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

Woodlawn Cemetery was one of several large cemeteries which were developed in the middle of the nineteenth century in the large cities of the United States. Since churchyards no longer had room to provide burial places for their parishioners, large private cemeteries were established with beautiful landscaping and attractive vistas. The first garden cemetery was Mount Auburn in Cambridge, established in 1831 across the river from Boston. Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where the Scott family is buried, and Woodlawn in The Bronx were two of the most famous of the garden cemeteries. Visiting the family graves was an occasion, and the setting was not unlike a magnificent park or botanical garden.

A map of Woodlawn Cemetery, showing where the Beck plot is located