Howard Beal, MD: When Duty Calls

Dale Magee, MD

Major Howard Beal’s name is well known to readers from Shrewsbury with the school named after him in 1923 and the new one, opening in 2021, continuing to carry his name. Few know that he was a physician.

Born in Maine in 1869, educated at Philips Andover Academy and Harvard and trained in surgery and urology at Massachusetts General Hospital, he joined the Army Medical Service upon completing training in 1898 and then served in the Philippines.

He came to Worcester in 1902, having married Henrietta Hobbs of Shrewsbury. Upon their marriage, her family provided them with the building known today as the Bull Mansion in Worcester for their home and his office. Here they lived and he practiced, passing the censors’ examination of the Medical Society in 1903 and doing his surgery in Worcester hospitals. In 1912 Beal moved his office to what was then the Peoples Bank building in Worcester at the corner of Main and Pleasant. They moved their home to the Waterlane Farm in Shrewsbury on Lake St.

He was someone who felt that he should help wherever there were military conflicts and after his stint in 1898 he advocated with the federal government to establish a Physician Reserve Corps, an effort that was successful after he traveled to Washington and met with military leadership. When WWI started he again felt called to duty even before the US entered in 1917. He volunteered on one of the first Red Cross ships to leave for England in 1914 and served at a hospital in England for just over a year. While there the hospital was visited by Queen Mary who personally thanked him for his service.

Returning to the US, he still felt pulled to serve and didn’t fully adjust to his return, not being able to accept the fact that most of those in America were not as compelled by the War as he was. When the US finally committed to enter the War, he spoke at the Worcester District Medical Society on April 11, 1917 and encouraged others to volunteer for the Medical Reserve Corps or to serve overseas. He then shipped out in June, 1917. He was in France on the evening of July 18, 1918 when, in the middle of a battle, with him near the front, a plane swooped low, and dropped a bomb. He was hit by shrapnel and died a few days later. He is buried in France at Suresnes American Cemetery. He was the only combat fatality of the Worcester District Medical Society in WWI.

In 1922, after several years of trying to establish a WWI Memorial in Shrewsbury, the committee decided to name various sites in town for those who lost their lives in WWI. With Beal being the highest-ranking soldier to lose his life, and the school having just been completed, it was decided to name the new high school after him as part of the Town WWI memorial effort.

I include here some quotes from his obituary from some who were with him:

J.H. Perkins, Commissioner of the Red Cross for Europe:

“When the horror of 1914 came upon the world, Europe, stunned and bleeding, pulled with ever insistent fingers upon the heartstrings of Dr. Beal. That he deemed this no less than his duty rose daily, uncompromisingly, before him. And so it was that long before all of Europe itself may be said to have realized its peril, he saw his way clearly and made the decision that was to bring him eventually not only the opportunity to help in binding the wounds of tortured humanity but to win for him, ultimately, the death of a soldier hero.

At the field hospital after being wounded he was lying perfectly quiet and at first I thought he was asleep, but when I spoke to him he opened his eyes and answered. We had a little talk together. He described his wound and seemed perfectly calm and self possessed. I left him with a feeling that I had seldom seen a finer sight in the way in which a great strong man had met such an accident... He remained conscious in fact up until almost the time of his death and I always preserved the same attitude, fine courage and simple strength.”

And from his colleague, Major Homer Gage, MD:

“His professional skill, his industry and his good judgment made him an exceedingly valuable man to the community and to the institutions which he faithfully served but to all who had the privilege of enjoying his friendship, it was the character and the personality of the man that can never be forgotten. His modesty and gentleness, his kindness and eager willingness to do for others made him always a delightful companion. His fine presence, charming manners and his thoughtfulness that never lapsed, insured him a welcome in every circle.”

About 50 of the letters that he wrote to his wife from July, 1917 until July 1918 survived and were published by a family friend in 1926. In the introduction, his friend, Louise Closser Hale, notes that “he was quick to discriminate between the gaudy and the gay, between trumpeting wrong and unvoiced right, between the lust of slaughter and the necessity for it. He knew the beauty if not the magic of the world that he lived in, the joy of little children and small animals, the soft rose bloom of a shrub. He knew the bitterness and the baseness of the world. This understanding was at once his armor and his hair shirt for his job as surgeon with the Forces of the American Expedition.”

A truly heroic man.